Increased Risk

Although it is too late to remove either of their names from the ballot paper, Labour and the Greens have both disowned their candidates at Rochdale, at least in Labour's case in order to blame him rather than Keir Starmer for defeat at the hands of George Galloway. This state of affairs is like nothing that has happened since, well, when, exactly?

Speaking of Starmer, Andrew Feinstein is a vastly more experienced politician, having first been elected to the South African Parliament 21 years before Starmer contested an election, although Feinstein is slightly the younger man. His role in relation to what is still referred to simply as "the Arms Deal" gives him real moral authority, as does his subsequent work against corruption and against the arms trade.

No one would accuse Donald Trump of having moral authority, but it is politically true that the United States would not defend a NATO member state that did not meet the two per cent target, whether in the wildly unlikely event that it were to be invaded by Russia, or under any other circumstance. NATO is finished. Explicitly, if Trump were re-elected. But implicitly, even if he were not. Facts must be faced.

The Conservatives, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP all refuse to face facts. 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.