A Damaging Concession

It was not the Post Office, nor was it anyone acting for the Post Office, that encouraged an expert witness to change his testimony in order to send the pregnant Seema Misra to prison with Rose West, never disclosing to the defence Gavin Jenkins's original statement.

Keir Starmer lobbied successfully to make it easier for himself, and only the Director of Public Prosecutions in person, to halt a private prosecution. Yet either he never noticed that subpostmasters had suddenly moved from being archetypal pillars of the community to being prosecuted for dishonesty at a rate of one in seven, or he never saw it as a problem. He never took over any Post Office private prosecution and halted it.

Yet Starmer took over several of the Post Office's private prosecutions and turned them into public prosecutions. This was one such, hence Warwick Tatford's reference to "the Crown". This was a public prosecution, by Starmer. It was not the only one. Why does Kevan Jones want Starmer to become Prime Minister?

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.

I have no plan to join the Workers Party of Britain, although nor would I expect to stand against it. If, however, it did not contest North Durham, then I would. 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. We have made a start.