They say you should never meet your heroes because they will always disappoint you. They also say you should avoid cliches like the plague. I met Patrick Stewart when he came to speak at the Cambridge Union about his strong support for the Labour Party. I must admit, I didn’t really go to hear him [...]
Richard over at Lenin’s Tomb pretty much summed up how I feel about the Blair roadshow rolling into town, but it’s worth reflecting on the following lines from the memoirs:
Ed Balls was of the opinion that the public wanted even more spending and were prepared for the extra tax, by reference to polls that the [...]
Like most readers of this blog, the Budget made me pretty angry – the VAT increase and tighter controls on benefits combined with the cut in corporation tax make a complete mockery of the claims that this Budget was ‘progressive’ in any sense, and millions of the poorest and most vulnerable people in this country [...]
Well, it happened. Not quite as anyone had been expecting, but it happened. The moment we’ve dreaded for the last three years.
David Cameron is the new Prime Minister.
I can’t say I will be sorry to see Brown go. I can’t say New Labour didn’t deserve to lose this election. I can say I will be [...]
There are many questions Labour needs to ask of itself, but why it lost the election is not actually at the top of the agenda. These things happen in a multi party democracy. And as a rule, a party’s share of the vote slides lower the longer it has been in power.
What matters then, [...]
Now that Brown’s promised to step down, it’s looking increasingly plausible that our next government will be a centre-left coalition of some kind. No doubt if this actually happens the rightwing press will go into a frenzy about how illegitimate and unfair it is for the Tories not to get into Government, but they can [...]
As things stand there’s a big(ish) swing to the Tories in every region of Britain, apart from Scotland where they’re pretty much nowhere and there’s actually a slight swing in favour of Labour and against the SNP. If this is what things still look like and the Tories haven’t made any gains North of the [...]
Stephen Byers is, I think we can agree, a tool. Cab for hire? Most pimps are into self-aggrandisement. They want to sound more significant than they are not less. Personally if I were a politician on the make, I’d call myself a facilitator, the power behind the throne, the hidden lever, The Cigarette Smoking Man. [...]
The whole blog seems to have caught election fever, and what with various other priorities pulling my more creative attention away, I thought I might as well stick my oar in and let people know what my personal priorities are going to be around the election. Obviously, I think these should be your priorities too.
Firstly, the challenge to [...]
Ok, perhaps he’s not wrong about everything, but Reuben wrote an article yesterday with which I have several significant disagreements. My main problem with his assertions stem from this cringe-worthy little paragraph:
In places like Cambridge – where they grabbed a seat last time – they seemed to get the vote of those who treated voting [...]
