Base Lines

First it was "north-eastern Jordan", and now it is on "the Jordanian-Syrian border". Give it until the morning. From the start, the King of Jordan has been adamant that those American troops had been killed in Syria. Where the American bases are illegal, and where people have been trying to kill their residents since long before the war in Gaza.

It is often asked, "How would the Americans like it if Mexico set up such bases in Texas?", or something in similar vein. That is a very good question, and here is another. Might not these American troops be more usefully deployed to Texas at the moment?

Meanwhile, the obviously undeterred Houthis have launched yet another of their attacks that managed to kill no one, injure no one in the slightest, or in this case even damage the ship, HMS Diamond. Undoubtedly grounds to kill more of the people who happened to live on or near the scraps of ground from which the Houthis had happened to launch their most recent drone attack, such as it was.

More broadly, the Houthis are not nice. I mean that they are really, really, really not nice. But while the genocide of Gaza persisted, then not even a nuclear strike could lift their blockade of the Red Sea, and now also of the Gulf of Aden. That is why hardly anyone is even trying. Unfortunately, British participation in this pointless enterprise is supported across the parliamentary spectrum, if it can be so described.

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 Keir 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.