For All The World As If They Knew What They Were Talking About

"To My Comrade David Lindsay, With Respect, George Galloway," it reads in the front of my copy of I'm Not the Only One, previously owned by the late, great Davey Ayre, who went on to sign my nomination papers for the 2019 General Election inside the legendary Durham Miners' Hall at Redhills.

Davey will be one of many of whom I shall be thinking from nine o'clock as I watched Miners' Strike: A Frontline Story on BBC Two, featuring at least one fully signed up columnist on my forthcoming magazine. Someone else who said yes in principle a while ago, and whom I really must chase up, is up for a BAFTA this evening, and may already have won it.

Anyway, it says at the bottom of page 67 of I'm Not the Only One that, "Air-headed blow-dried telly-dollies (and some women broadcasters), chosen for their dentistry and ability to read an autocue, would question me on television about "weapons of mass destruction" for all the world as if they knew what they were talking about." Have you got that, Catherine Bennett? No, of course you haven't.

Bennett might more usefully, or indeed at all usefully, have asked what good the Windrush Line was to those victims of the Windrush Scandal who were still waiting for compensation. Hey, ho. Labour activists in the old Lib-Lab marginal of Rochdale are desperately telling people to vote Liberal Democrat to stop George. They know.

The new MP for Kingswood, Damien Egan, is married to Yossi Felberbaum, a recruiter for the IDF's Unit 8200, an infamous collector of intelligence for blackmail and for secret evidence. Will this person be issued with a parliamentary pass? George will very soon be on the case. And all MPs under 35 should be made to attend George's latest maiden speech, so that broadcasters could show the looks on their faces, not only because of the content, but also because of, well, we know, don't we? Those were the days, which are about to come back.

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.