As everyone in the universe is by now surely aware, two members of the boy band One Direction have been caught on video smoking what they refer directly to as marijuana. In the wake of this incident, there has been a fury unleashed the likes of which has not been seen since Beatles records were […]
Archives for May 2014
The top five failed political coups in British history
In the wake of Lord Oakeshott’s epic failure to unseat Nick Clegg as leader of the Liberal Democrats, I thought it might be fun to look at the top five failed attempts at unseating someone in a position of power in the history of our great nation. 5. Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot (1605) […]
“That” ICM poll and how it seems to be having the opposite effect intended
Yesterday morning, I saw an article on the Guardian’s website written by Patrick Wintour and Nicholas Watt in which the headlines spoke of a “damning” poll by ICM which showed that the Lib Dems would be wiped out in certain constituencies – including Sheffield Hallam. My heart raced; it certainly looked bad, and at exactly […]
Lib Dems who want rid of Clegg forget how hard it is to be heard
There has been pressure applied on Nick Clegg to step down as leader of the party following the dismal display in the locals, which was followed by the even worse one in the EP elections. I’ve already written about why I think Nick’s still the man for the job and nothing has changed my mind over the […]
A plea to my fellow Lib Dems: If Clegg steps down, what happens next?
Yesterday’s EP election results were gutting. In fact, I haven’t felt that badly about an election result since 2010, when in the face of poll results telling us we were going to get a hundred-plus seats and “Cleggmania”, we ended up losing five. Even with all of the disappointing democratic results that have followed, including […]
“Working Girl” and Gender Politics in 1980’s American Cinema
Before becoming a father, I had assumptions about gender equality that have since been somewhat dashed. This first came about via an NCT class my wife and I enrolled in to prepare us for parenthood. It was a private class and in Nunhead, so I figured it would be a very upper-middle class gang of […]
Today’s election results will tell us nothing about 2015
Because I spend a lot of my time convincing people that voting is worthwhile, I should begin by stating why I think voting today is important. Although people tend to treat it as an insignificant, the European Parliament has a lot more power than people tend to consider. Also, while it’s done under the worst […]
A word to Nigel Farage: Libertarianism and Nationalism are mutually exclusive and here’s why
I’m no libertarian. I believe fundamentally in the freedom of the individual, but I do not think the state need always be the bad guy in this equation. For instance, I quite like having an NHS. Furthermore, I feel that having a health service makes me more, not less free as an individual. The fact […]
What would a UKIP of the left actually look like?
Owen Jones, left wing agitator extraordinaire, wrote an article in the Indy a year and a half ago asking why there was no left wing equivalent of UKIP. He didn’t put it in the following words, but I will: why, in the face of the splintering of the party political system, combined with Ed Miliband’s […]
How bad will the 2015 general election be for the Lib Dems?
Within a great deal of the Westminster bubble, the demise of the Liberal Democrats post-2015 is taken as a given. A Labour peer once told me, very matter-of-factly, that Nick Clegg was certain to lose his seat. When I told her that given there has never been a constituency poll that has ever revealed this […]