And The Blowfish

Certain newspapers and television stations claim every day that the Channel is undefended such that an invasion has been going on for years. Yet they will be campaigning ferociously for the governing party this year. And they affect to have every confidence that the Red Sea could be pacified by the same Navy under the same political direction.

Meanwhile, they report that, at the insistence of City of London insurers, British merchant shipping in the Red Sea will be flying the Chinese Ensign, at whatever price the Chinese felt like charging. Containing many people who know the true state of the Royal Navy and who know the Arab world well, Toryland is not behind this war. The only solution to the situation in the Red Sea is a ceasefire in Gaza.

The Houthis have themselves become an example of how easy it is for a government to maintain an off-the-books force whose 10-a-penny drones cost the Americans one million dollars per shot to take down. There are already many more, and there could be many more again. Look at the countries that have to be passed in order to go round the Cape of Good Hope. Various combinations of Islam, Chinese clientelism, and Russian alliance, all the way down to the South Africa that has invoked the Genocide Convention against Israel, and then all the way back up again. Welcome to Africa, which is also the real beating heart of Evangelical Protestantism, now sending missionaries to Europe, as is the Catholic Church there, which is likely to provide the next Pope. Look at the United Nations voting record, and think on.

Membership of the BRICS doubled today, and one of the new members is the United Arab Emirates, which will soon own the Telegraph Group. In its present form, the flagship of that is so delirious with demob happiness and with the death rattle that it is publishing John Bolton, who as much as anything else would certainly not be reprising his role in a Trump Administration. Even by Keir Starmer's usual standards, how ridiculous he looks for having tried to cosy up to the Telegraph as we have known it. Its last days should also be his, in these days when topdrawer Arabism may be returning to the Foreign Office to protect us from his jumped-up oikishness and from Tony Blair's.

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 Rishi 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.