Toby Young wrote a piece in the Telegraph this past week entitled, “An invitation to Dan Hodges to join the Conservative Party“. It was written in the wake of Dan quitting the Labour Party and writing about this fact in his own Telegraph column. In response, Dan wrote a piece called “Why I won’t join […]
Archives for December 2015
Where are the 100,000 Labour moderates going to come from?
The Telegraph, which admittedly is not the greatest place to gather news on what’s happening inside the Labour Party most of the time, has told us that the plan of the Labour moderates is to sit back until early 2017 and then try and reclaim some territory. This actually does chime with people I know […]
Mr Corbyn goes to Brussels
“I am concerned about the way the European Union is increasingly operating like a free market across Europe” – Jeremy Corbyn, August, 2015 I swear to you, I’m not making that quote up; the current leader of the Labour Party actually said that at a hustings during the contest to be Ed’s successor as Grand Poobah […]
Is David Cameron a genius or a fool? I can no longer tell
Put aside for a moment what you think of the prime minister politically. Obviously if you are anywhere on the Left, Cameron is the champion of austerity, Thatcher times ten. If you are a Daily Mail reader, Dave is a lily-livered liberal somewhere to the left of Trotsky. No, what I’m after today is trying […]
What Stop the War and Momentum need to realise is the rest of us are only trying to deal with reality
I was having another look at Isaac Deutscher’s outstanding biography of Trotsky over the weekend (having not peeked at it since my late teens) and was reminded again of the chaos surrounding the USSR in the period post-civil war and pre-Stalin. Essentially, Lenin and his inner circle realised something pretty awful: socialism doesn’t really work. Like, […]
The five worst Christmas movies ever made
‘Tis the season and all that, so I thought I would try and catalogue the five worst attempts by the motion picture industry to capture the magic. If this comes across as a little Scrooge-esque – why not the five best Christmas films then? – I will answer back that there is no fun in […]
If Corbyn faces the 2020 general election, it will be a test of this
Views on how long Corbyn will last as leader vary. Some of my Labour friends insist he’ll be gone within the next two years. However, these are mostly people who were certain, right up until September 12th, that Corbyn wouldn’t become leader in the first place. So I would venture there could be some wishful […]
Vladimir Putin v the European Union – on the 10th anniversary of Russia Today
Whatever else I could ever say about Vladimir Putin, I do have to admit he is a political genius. What’s really remarkable about this is that he has effectively ruled a country for almost the entirety of the 21st century to date in which this has not been an essential skill. For in what is […]
Was Angela Eagle that great at PMQs? Or is the applause at her performance symptomatic of something else?
In the absence of David Cameron from the country, George Osborne took his place at PMQs yesterday, which meant that Angela Eagle took over on the opposition side. This event is notable for the following reasons: 1. The very loud and unquestionably enthusiastic cheer that erupted from the Labour MPs as Bercow called upon Angela […]
Why people like Donald Trump are a real problem for liberalism in more ways than one
After Donald Trump said what he said about banning Muslims from America…..actually, as a point of order, let’s see exactly what Trump did say: “We need a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States while we figure out what the hell is going on.” The key phrase being “total and complete shutdown”, […]