The Republican Party is in real turmoil at the moment. Although there is still time and hope within the ranks of their more sensible players that it will all come good in the end, at the moment they have two frontrunners in the presidential nominee race in Trump and Carson who are completely unelectable. However, […]
Archives for October 2015
If you want to know what life would be like in a post-EU Britain, don’t look to Norway – instead just review Xi Jinping’s visit this month
In the wake of Cameron’s speech denouncing the “Norwegian model” as an alternative for Britain to EU membership, the Outers have all piled in to denounce the idea themselves. Odd, as they used to be quite taken with the notion of emulating that particular Scandinavian country’s way of trading with the world (as many a Bruges […]
The tax credits row reminds us how fragile the Tory majority actually is
As I said yesterday, the Tories have suddenly turned on the House of Lords. Everyone from Boris to the Chancellor have now come out with the line that the Upper Chamber should not stand in the way of the now to be stressed “elected chamber’s” wishes. But what the last week has really done, more than anything […]
Does the government actually want to lose this particular vote?
It’s all happening in the House of Lords this week. The Conservative Party, former stalwart guardians of the Upper House, have taken to highlighting the other place’s lack of democracy (it’s been that way for some time now, guys), with the whiff of “constitutional crisis” in the air (being talked about on this occasion, ironically, by […]
Just how likely are mass reselections of Labour MPs before the next election anyway?
The right of the Labour Party has been complaining since Corbyn became front-runner to be the next Labour leader that once installed, Corbyn would go about having any MP who doesn’t like him (i.e. almost all of them) deselected in order to make space for someone more, shall we say, malleable to the Corbyn plan. […]
Okay, the Cameron pig thing is getting old, and the Left would do itself a favour by halting its obsession with it
I was at Lib Dem conference when the whole Cameron/pig/college ritual story that we don’t need to go into detail about here since you all know what I am talking about broke. It was predictably the talk of Bournemouth. Myself, I had actually heard the whole story for the first time years and years ago, […]
The 10 best expressions of suburban life in art of all time
As someone who grew up in suburbia and didn’t really enjoy it all that much, I have a particular soft spot for anything that describes artfully the depressing facts of life which comprise the coming of age in such an environment. What I’ve tried to do here is assemble the ten best such works, which […]
Is the age of two-party politics back? Will we see another coalition government again?
Prior to the May 2015 general election, a lot of obituaries on the two-party system in Britain were written. I recall reading somewhere that the moon striking the Earth in the next few weeks was more likely than one party forming a majority government. The age of coalitions was, apparently, here to stay. But then […]
Could UKIP win the Oldham West and Royton by-election?
This week, veteran Labour MP Michael Meacher passed away. The man’s politics was not my own, but he was clearly someone who felt passionately about his own positions and often wrote eloquently about them. This has obviously led the way to a by-election to take place in the Oldham West and Royton constituency at a […]
Why the unelected House of Lords will probably still be around in 2100
I worked for an organisation that was trying to support a change to the House of Lords to transform it into a mostly elected chamber back in 2012. Needless to say the enterprise was not a success. The foremost reason for this is because to say that neither the Tories nor Labour want any significant changes […]