I remember the fall of the Berlin Wall very clearly. I was a few weeks shy of my seventeen birthday, and this momentous event felt as if it came out of nowhere. The Cold War had been the backdrop to my entire life up until that point; the idea that it was ending seemed unimaginable. […]
Archives for December 2015
Would the Lib Dems have done better in May 2015 if they’d been more like the Corbynistas?
As one who writes some critical things regarding Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership from time to time, I have been on the receiving end of a reasonable amount of Corbynista abuse. The one thing about it I find truly fascinating is that they are genuinely outraged by any attack, perceived or otherwise on their man; the fans […]
This is the harsh truth about anti-Corbynites
There appear to be two viewpoints within Labour if one is an anti-Corbynite. The first goes that Jeremy is a stain on the nation and the party and that all effort must be put into wresting power away from him as quickly as possible. The alternative opinion being that ultimately the Tories are the enemy […]
Will Corbyn actually sack disloyal shadow cabinet members in January?
Word reaches me from several sources that Jeremy Corbyn is indeed going to clear the shadow frontbenches of those who have shown disloyalty thus far, most prominent amongst the casualties being Angela Eagle and Hilary Benn – however, Angela’s sister, Maria, looks to be in the firing line as well. And it could apparently happen […]
Being a traditional Tory seems like hard work these days
It appears that the anti-politically correct brigade have got themselves into a jam. The Home Office has a plan to update marriage certificates so that instead of just having places for the name of the father of the bride and the father of the groom, there will also be a space to put the names […]
I worry about the future of trade unionism: confessions of a liberal
Dave Prentis, the current general secretary of Unison, is being faced with a threat to his leadership by three candidates – all of them well to the left of him politically. Although the coverage of this has been minimal in the national press (The Guardian covered it, that’s about it), it is major news – […]
Is there really no room at the cinema for baby Jesus?
The Daily Telegraph ran a feature this week that is perhaps the worst piece I have ever seen in the newspaper, one entitled “No room at the cinema for baby Jesus“. It’s basically a re-hash of the old “the secularists are trying to ban Christmas” spiel, but this article came across as a sort of […]
Is Europe’s political centre is being eaten by the radical left and nationalist right?
The article you are currently reading was triggered by Paul Mason’s piece in the Guardian yesterday, “Podemos: how Europe’s political centre is being eaten by the radical left and nationalist right” in which he discussed the idea that both the far-right and the far-left are becoming so powerful that continuing to have two parties who […]
The Andrea Jenkyns-Jack Lopresti story highlights how lousy a job being an MP actually is
Yesterday, a story broke regarding two Tory politicians. One of them was Andrea Jenkyns, who some of you may recall as the woman who beat Ed Balls in Morley and Outwood at the general election to provide one of the shock results of the evening. The other is Jack Lopresti, MP for Filton and Bradley Stoke since […]
Politics in 2015: the year behind us, the year in front of us
I’ll start all this by saying I’m quite glad 2015 is almost at an end. In political terms, this was a year to survive as opposed to savour (unless you’re a Tory or a Scottish nationalist). Both of the large centre-left parties in parliamentary terms (actually, to avoid fights let’s rephrase that as the two […]