Whigs In Wigs

In asserting Argentina's "non-negotiable sovereignty" over the Falkland Islands, Javier Milei is simply declaring himself an Argentinian. It would hardly matter, except that the mini-Budget had a ruinous enough effect on the much more robust British economy. Anything remotely resembling Milei's programme would so devastate the Argentine that there would be only one way of distracting popular attention. And then, those of you to whom the Milei is your latest toupée after the Trump and the Thatcher, where would you be?

Things would be complicated further by the probability of support for Milei by Israel, which armed Argentina last time. How could Menachem Begin have done anything else? It is repulsive to see those who grift above the line against anti-imperialism, and those who echo them for free underneath, baying like hyenas in support of the country and the party that were founded by the Irgun and the Lehi. They tend to dislike even quite loyally Commonwealth countries, never mind longstanding British allies in the Arab world, although they do not dislike them for the right reasons. Whatever might be the difference?

Centrism and right-wing populism are both con tricks, designed to sell the same extreme and unpopular economic and foreign policies to different audiences by pretending to wage a culture war. So what would Keir Starmer say if Israel supported Argentina? What would he say if, perhaps only hours from now, there were a ceasefire, and that due to negotiation with Hamas? Would Benjamin Netanyahu be pre-emptively banned from the Labour Party, but on those grounds alone?

Meanwhile, the delightful surprise of coverage of the settlers' war on Christian Jerusalem even in The Times suggests that there may be life yet in the party of David Cameron, Andrew Mitchell, William Hague and Rishi Sunak. It has annoyed Oliver Kamm like nothing since I got a letter from distinguished economists into that paper, endorsing Jeremy Corbyn for Leader of the Labour Party. And that was before The Times sacked Kamm. He obviously had no influence there even eight years ago. The wonder is that it kept him on the payroll as long as it did.

No distinguished economist would endorse Labour now. It opposed only one of the mini-Budget measures, the only one that had not been in Liz Truss's prospectus to Conservative Party members. Had Kwasi Kwarteng's loony list ever been put to a Commons vote, then the Labour whip would have been to abstain. Having committed itself to whatever tax and spending it happened to inherit next year, Labour is desperate for Jeremy Hunt to abolish inheritance tax.

But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.