If you trawl this very website, you will be able to see various strains of extremely wishful thinking regarding the Liberal Democrats’ electoral prospects come May 7th, 2015, all written prior to that day, obviously. Like when I thought the party would get 17% of the vote. Or speculated on the possibility of 45 seats. […]
Archives for October 2015
This is the one thing that is holding back UKIP from true electoral success
Some would argue that my headline is misleading: that UKIP have already had electoral success. The 2014 Euros? Yes, but that was sort of a protest vote. In December of that same year, six months out from the general election, I predicted that UKIP would end up with one seat, that being Douglas Carswell’s, post […]
What does a good 2020 election result look like for the Tories and Labour?
I was going to do this article about the election result scenarios for all of the relatively major parties in the UK, but then realised I was falling into the “BBC leaders debates” trap of having to focus on about eight of them at least. So I thought, let’s stick to the big two; that […]
What will do Jeremy Corbyn in won’t be his radicalism – it will be his timidity
The latest controversy involving Jeremy Corbyn comes one day after David Cameron alluded to him in his conference leader speech as a terrorist-loving, Britain hater. The incident in question involves Corbyn rejecting an invite from the Queen to be sworn in by her to the Privy Council. Jeremy has cited “prior engagements” as his reason […]
Final thoughts of Tory conference: we are all Tory scum now
The weather has been mostly good. As it had been in Brighton. Such a contrast to the way things feel on the ground; politically speaking, everything feels very cloudy indeed. The future of Britain in the EU, and by extension the very future of the UK itself, is in doubt. We can only hope the […]
Whatever political force eventually usurps the Tories will have to understand why people vote Tory in the first place
Bringing Tony Blair into any political discussion these days is asking for trouble, but he does really belong in this one: as the guy who managed to get the Labour Party three parliamentary majorities in a row, a feat extremely likely to never be repeated, his achievement is instructive. How does Labour get back into […]
Why do the Tories keep holding their conferences in Manchester?
Prior to this year’s Tory conference beginning, delegates were warned by none other than Lord Feldman, the chair of the Conservative Party, to hide their passes when outside the secure zones for fear of physical attack. I didn’t need anyone from the Tories to tell me that walking around Manchester with a CPC pass on […]
The latest Russian moves in Syria show how much the West has failed in the region
I’ve found the recent Russian intervention in Syria so depressing, I’ve had to stop reading about further developments on it. I just think about the death toll; all those people in Syria who have fought against the Assad regime in the hopes of a democratic future for their country; those who thought the US would […]
The Tories have had the easiest summer imaginable – their conference in Manchester will be more of the same
Looking ahead to Conservative Party conference, which begins tomorrow, I find it impossible to imagine a situation in which Cameron and his party don’t come through the whole thing with flying colours. Some Tories I know, ground down by years of this sort of stuff being fluffed, are certain that someone will defect to UKIP […]
Why has the Left conceded the culture wars to the Right in Britain?
On Monday morning, I chaired a fringe at Labour conference with Stephen Kinnock and Emran Mian on the panel, talking about the Nordic model and what bits of it could be taken up by the Left and what bits probably could not. It was entitled “Alternatives to Austerity”, so I was hardly pushing some sort […]