Virtute et Industria?

Do Kingswood's successor seats already have Labour candidates for the General Election? This Egan had better enjoy it while it lasted. I told you that Bristol, of which that part of Gloucestershire is among the suburbs, was full of Greens. And they have kept their deposit. The four Labour MPs for the city itself should take nothing for granted. Even here at North West Durham last time, more people voted Green than Richard Holden's margin of victory. There has never been a Green councillor in North West Durham. There are 25 on Bristol City Council, the single largest bloc, elected before Labour's recent U-turn.

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.