Today’s by-elections in Copeland and Stoke Central are – it is safe to say without the dreaded hyperbole – epoch defining. So what’s going to happen? Here’s where I nail my colours to the mast. To say I’m worried about this would be to devalue just how shaky I feel about these predictions: we really […]
Why aren’t the Lib Dems doing better in the national polls? A possible answer
How you emotionally respond to the question I’ve posed in the headline will have a lot to do with your politics. “Who cares?” might be one. “They’re doing pretty well given the tuition fees fiasco” might be another. “Who cares about the national polls – look at all those local by-election wins!” will paint you […]
How the Milo Yiannopoulis paedophile scandal demonstrates how lost modern conservatism really is
Perhaps some of you don’t follow the goings on of the American alt right as closely as I do, so allow me to explain the initial premise of this article: Milo Yiannopoulos, the (former?) darling of the movement known as the alt right, has got himself into a fair amount of hot water over comments […]
How what Corbyn is now doing is killing Labour…..forever
Tory campaigners in Copeland are feeling very confident. Most of this comes from what they are hearing on the doorstep. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard. You turn up to former Labour voters houses thinking you’re going to have to make an anti-Corbyn case and they’re way ahead of you. The dislike of Corbyn is […]
What’s important to take away from the Trump “chaos” press conference
What’s going to be so exhausting about the Trump presidency will be the sheer pace of it. My wife asked me yesterday late afternoon if I’d seen the Trump press conference madness. I thought she meant the crazy Netanyahu one, where Trump may or may not have shut the book on twenty years of diplomacy regarding […]
To those saying that Corbyn’s future is on the line in Copeland and Stoke, have you learned nothing?
It is looking increasingly bad for Labour in the two by elections to be held on February 23rd, i.e. next Thursday. The Tories have a small but steady lead in Copeland, and barring a herculean ground campaign on the day, Labour are almost certain to lose. Corbyn and his inner circle seem to have all […]
2017 – where will all be at the end of it? Some predictions
For most of you reading this, 2016 was a terrible year. Perhaps there are some out there who believe the opposite is true: given Nigel Farage almost certainly figured 2016 was one of the best years ever ever, there must be at least a few of you in existence. Either way, now that 2016 has […]
The Right fools itself by thinking it doesn’t engage in dystopia porn
This morning’s Telegraph View column is entitled “Most Britons don’t share Ken Loach’s dystopian vision of his country“. I agree. In fact, of all the failings of the British Left over the last decade, perhaps the largest is a consistent over-egging of how bad certain problems are, resulting in a “cry wolf” factor when a […]
The Left has a choice: go communitarian or go liberal. You can’t do both
There is a particular strain of thought on the Left that I find really irksome – for lack of a better word, let’s call it “communitarian liberalism”. It is essentially utopian in outlook because it avoids several aspects of hard reality. And if ever there was a time for the Left to put aside non-achievable […]
If Labour hold Stoke Central, it will be down to sheer luck
The Paul Nuttall campaign has demonstrated again why UKIP haven’t been able to achieve breakthrough despite their popularity amongst certain portions of the population. They like to blame it on the First Past the Post system, which admittedly isn’t a help to them, but that’s cop out: UKIP are just really, really bad at campaigning. And […]