After Labour’s less than apocalyptic (but still poor) local election showings in England, coupled with Sadiq Khan’s victory in London, the coup of Jeremy Corbyn post EU referendum looks less likely than ever. What is most interesting about this is that while Khan becoming mayor has theoretically helped Corbyn, at least in the short term, […]
Archives for May 2016
I have started to worry that Boris will be prime minister no matter what
Another day, another Cameron v Boris Europe spat. Cameron today has set out the “emotional” case for Remain, while Boris is apparently laying out the “liberal” case for Leave. That sentence leaves no further room for satire, so I will leave it there. In arguing so vociferously for something a lot of Tories do not […]
Sadiq Khan is British progressive politics’ one ray of hope
Whatever some of the Left might tell you, last Thursday was for the most part a very good day for the Tories. They became the official opposition in Scotland, something that would have been totally unthinkable even a couple of years ago. This is one of those achievements that will reverberate through British politics for […]
Thursday’s result was the worst possible one for the Labour Party in a way
The local elections were nowhere near as bad as many (myself included) had predicted for Labour. The 150+ losses never materialised. Labour lost seats in England, but far below anyone’s expectations. Well, except for Jeremy Corbyn who had told the world that the party would lose no seats at all, but he’s usually a special […]
Yesterday’s elections: here’s what we know so far
We’re a long way from knowing the full picture (we will by early tonight), but there a few things that are becoming clearer already regarding yesterday’s elections. Let’s start with Scotland. It looks as though just when you thought Scottish Labour couldn’t fall any further, another negative milestone is reached. The Tories have beaten Labour for […]
Another Corbyn catastrophe in the Commons
I’m getting bored of this myself. Seriously, I am. By this stage, I’m really only cataloguing everything so that one day the centre-left can rebuild – think of these article as breadcrumbs back to sanity then – or failing that, as a document to where the Left finally killed itself in Britain for all time. […]
Corbyn tells the world that tomorrow’s election results essentially don’t matter to him
We live in an age when if someone says to you at the end of a day, “did you hear about the Corbyn thing?”, you can’t be sure that the questioner and you are thinking of the same thing since there will have been “multiple things” to have occurred to the Labour leader over the previous […]
How Labour’s week has been Ionesco-esque
The word “Kafkaesque” gets overused in politics, often by people who have never read a word of the late Czech genius. Looking back over the week the Labour Party has just had, I can see people reaching for the literary comparisons. I think the giant of letters who would have most likely come up with […]
A word about the EU referendum polls at present – if you want to understand them, look back to AV referendum ones from the same period out
I know, I’ve made a lot of comparisons between the current EU referendum campaigns and the ones fought prior to the AV referendum. Some might say I’m simply trying to graft one experience of nationwide referenda onto a completely different situation. I would respond by saying I really, really did expect this all to feel […]