Yesterday should have been a triumphant one for Theresa May, given the Brexit Bill passed without a single amendment – but she bizarrely decided to give it a downbeat twist. Free to trigger Article 50 this week, she has decided to hold off until the end of the month for no clear reason. The only […]
Corbyn screws up in Scotland, big time…..yet again
Remember back in those halcyon days of ’15, when Jeremy Corbyn was being touted as the Labour leader who would bring Scotland back into the party’s orbit; the guy who would vanquish the SNP, leaving Labour to gleefully take the Scots for granted again, once more able to use the seats as a convenient place to dump […]
If the Left wants to regain power, it needs to be a lot more honest with itself and others
Over the last almost seven years since Labour left government, there has been no shortage of figures from that party writing long theses on how the Left can turn itself around and gain the upper hand once again. The thing is, pretty much every single one of them rings totally hollow. And as much as they […]
The successful Tory backbench revolt over the budget demonstrates how terrible Corbyn is at opposition
The backlash from within Conservative circles to this week’s budget has really been quite a thing to witness. The right of centre press has been filled with “NI increase for self-employed means communism is here/entrepreneurs will starve/the 2015 manifesto has been torn to shreds,” and has been coupled with Tory backbenchers assurances that they will […]
The budget is the clearest sign yet of how Tory hegemony is going to work
When Tony Blair was prime minister, he used what has infamously (and often pejoratively) become referred to as “triangulation”. What it meant in practice was that Labour could ignore traditional bases of support such as the white northern working-classes, essentially take them for granted, because they “had nowhere else to go”. All of the firepower was […]
Numbers that show Labour members are prepared to support Corbyn, even after he loses in 2020
There is a YouGov poll of Labour members out this week that is very interesting. On the straight up approval rating, the support for Corbyn amongst them is clear cut: 72% approve, 17% disapprove. When you ask if they would vote for Corbyn in a third leadership contest involving him, the numbers get a lot […]
This fight between rival Unite factions highlights the problems of the modern Left perfectly
Yesterday, outside of Unite HQ near Holborn in London, supporters of Len McCluskey and Gerald Coyne had a physical confrontation with each other. I don’t want to go overboard in describing this kerfuffle – it sounds like it was more handbags at midday than a riot – but it still acts as a beautiful illustration of […]
What would a US-UK free trade deal look like? A “2017” excerpt
The following is a small excerpt from my book, “2017”, available now in digital form and paperback. Is a free trade deal between the US and the UK a genuine possibility? The Tories better hope it is. Because from where we currently stand, I see only two ways out of Brexit not being a very […]
The 2020 general election will be about who can hoover up the ex-Labour vote – how well placed are the Lib Dems, really?
One thing is pretty much certain: the Labour vote is going to go down and the Tory vote up from where they both were in the 2015 general election when the next GE comes around. It’s a matter of how much, really. Labour could go down 5% nationally – or 10%, or even more. The […]
When Labour loses the next general election, will Corbyn stay on as leader or step down?
I first thought about making the first word of the headline “if”, but then figured why bother, let’s get real here. I should also confess that the impetus for this article is a conversation I had this week with a friend of mine, Tim Barnes, who I should also by way of disclosure reveal is […]