During the 2010-2015 parliament, Ed Miliband’s Labour was in the slightly uncomfortable position of wishing the Coalition’s cuts bit hard enough to get people to reconsider their vote last time around; in other words, they had to hope that the people who usually support them were in line to suffer enough to repent. But political […]
Archives for February 2017
Why any attempt by Labour to form a “progressive alliance” is doomed to failure
News reaches us that the Labour Party are trying to come to some sort of arrangement with both the Lib Dems and the Greens in Stoke Central in an effort to keep Paul Nuttall out of parliament. This tells you that Labour really do think they will lose the seat to UKIP in a few […]
Given the makeup of parliament and the Labour leadership, I don’t see the point in the EEA legal challenge
I have written on the topic of Labour and the Brexit proceedings a great deal lately, so I’ll try and make this one brief. Even I’m getting sick of talking about it; yet given how important this is for what remains of progressive politics in this country, it is still vital to catalogue every detail. […]
Why is John McDonnell still pretending that Labour are fighting against a “reckless Brexit”?
John McDonnell was on the Today programme this morning, discussing Labour’s position on Brexit. Why he agreed to do this is unknown (Diane Abbott, showing her much greater political nous, steered clear of both the vote and the aftermath), but there he was, trying to make sense of Labour’s position on Brexit. He, like everyone […]
Yesterday’s second reading of the Article 50 bill was both sad and bizarre. How did we get here?
If I were Gina Miller, I’d want my time and effort back. The courts ruled in favour of parliament having a say in the triggering of Article 50, only for parliament to give over one of the most tepid, passive sessions in its long history. It were as if the House of Commons was having […]