Yesterday, I predicted mayhem for Labour, with the party looking to do worse than many pundits expect, ending up on between 100-120 seats overall. As if this prediction wasn’t bad enough, it might turn out in the end to be too rosy. This is due to the fact that one of Corbyn’s first thoughts after […]
Right, general election on June 8th, 2017. What’s going to happen? Some predictions
The moment some thought wouldn’t happen has arrived: an early general election. I myself put the likelihood of this happening in 2017 at a mere 20% in my book, so I am as stunned as anyone. Unless somehow Labour whips a vote against (and Corbyn has already publicly said Labour will vote for it tomorrow) […]
Why this talk from Tories about Cornish flags on licences could lead somewhere unintended
I know some of my readers will have been kept up nights of late worrying about the real problem of our age: what do we replace the EU flag with on UK driving licences once Brexit is complete? Of course, I could churlishly chime in here that we could just redesign the licences any way […]
UKIP may be dying – but could a viable opposition party emerge to the right of the Tories?
Douglas Carswell wrote in the Guardian yesterday about a party of opposition emerging to take the place of Labour – one that would ideologically be positioned to the right of the Conservatives. Of course, this being Douglas, the whole thing sounds like another libertarian fantasy; that the Left will suddenly collectively think somehow that socialism […]
A week in the life of Labour demonstrates exactly why they’re on course to lose hundreds of seats next month
I spent most of yesterday in the town of Budva, on a beach that in high season hosts wealthy Russians but in April we had mostly to ourselves. From the view in Montenegro, the machinations of the Labour Party look even more ridiculous than they do from my usual ringside seat in Westminster. John McDonnell […]
I don’t understand why Mark Reckless is staying in politics
I recall vividly the first day of the 2014 Tory conference in Birmingham. As an aside, every Tory conference for the last 87 years has been in either Brum or Manchester. Anyhow, what was memorable about the first day of 2014 Tory conference was that Mark Reckless, until earlier that very morning a Conservative MP, […]
How will the Lib Dems do in the May local elections? And what does a good day for them look like?
On May 4th, the electorate go to the polls in 27 non-metropolitan county councils in England, 7 unitary councils in England, one metropolitan borough in England (Doncaster), while every local seat in Scotland and Wales will be contested. Given how many local seats the Lib Dems lost in the last parliament, combined with Lib Dem excitement around local […]
Why the Eurosceptics should oddly be an inspiration for progressives
So today is the day. Article 50 and all that. We knew it was coming, and here it is. What I’d like to take time to talk about will seem odd to some of you. But here goes: what the Eurosceptics have achieved should inspire today’s progressives in one particular way, which is this: regardless […]
Here’s the saddest thing about Corbyn’s leadership of Labour
There are many things to lament in regards to Corbyn’s stewardship of Labour. The destruction of the possibility that any party other than the Conservatives will be able to win a general election for the next generation, for instance, and all of the problems that brings (for the Conservatives as much as anyone else). But this […]
Len McCluskey is supposedly giving Corbyn 15 months to turn things around. So what happens in summer 2018 then?
Over the weekend Len McCluskey gave an interview on Pienaar in which he talked a lot about the importance of workers’ rights being protected during and after the Brexit process, the need for stronger unions in order to battle coming mechanisation, how key it is to return Britain to full employment…..I’m kidding, of course, he actually complained […]