Author: robert.marchant

Jimmy Stewart as Bailey in the original “It’s A Wonderful Life” (With apologies to the late Frank Capra)Christmas Eve, 2013: snow was falling fast in the small town of Leftford Falls, the stores were packing up for Christmas and Edward Bailey – known to his friends as Ed, and his detractors as “Red Ed” –… Continue reading It’s a wonderful Labour life – a Christmas special

Moscow, I have recently discovered, has a decent daily English-language newspaper, the Moscow Times. Among the dull things which interest Western businesspeople (“Leasing Commercial Property: A New Approach To An Old Problem” – zzzzz), it has a lively Opinion section which is well worth a read. Now, while its attitude to the Putin government tends… Continue reading Letter from Moscow: declining human rights, drifting economy and the return of “spheres of influence”

With the thousands of pieces being written around the world about the death of a political giant, this is not about the great man himself – there are plenty of people better-qualified to write that one. But it’s worth pausing to think about Mandela’s relationship with Labour. Like many, I grew up in the late… Continue reading The Tories who failed to support Mandela’s “long walk to freedom” were not bad, merely wrong

First, let’s get a few things straight. The Co-op Bank is not the Co-op Group, and is not the Co-op Party, a separate political party which sponsors MPs, among other things. Problems for one does not necessarily mean disaster for all three. And there are two further stories currently being bandied around, both fallacies. And… Continue reading The real reason why the Co-op saga is bad news for Labour

Yesterday published my tenth piece for the Independent, on how Len McCluskey’s current manoeuvres could now have reverberations on the whole union movement for years to come.

Now, I have never been a fan of Gordon Brown’s decision to leave the “Golden Rule” behind and stop balancing the books over the economic cycle. He borrowed more than he should have, with the result that Britain was rather caught with its trousers around its ankles when the global financial crisis came. But it… Continue reading Livingstone: still there, still up to his old tricks

I provide only the information: On Sunday Politics with Andrew Neil, McCluskey denies (8:07) Unite legal chief, Howard Beckett, said in an email that his Communications team should prepare “nasty stuff” on Labour figures here. “That’s not true!” exclaims a hurt-sounding McCluskey. It is all a dastardly plot by the Tories and the Tory media. “What emails?”… Continue reading So Len, just run this by me again, I’m confused…

“Oh, what a tangled web we weaveWhen first we practise to deceive.”             – Sir Walter Scott, Marmion Ah, Falkirk. We drew a line under it, didn’t we? Only we didn’t.A couple of months ago Uncut noted that the Falkirk debacle was unfinished business. But even we didn’t expect there to be quite such a… Continue reading The web we have woven in Falkirk

I didn’t know Norman Geras, or “Norm”, as he was known by the blogging fraternity, that well – we certainly never spoke, although I had a number of exchanges with him – but I feel strangely like I have lost someone important today. As well as a blogger, I am aware he has been a… Continue reading To Norm

Setting aside for the moment the fact that the Westminster lobby seems to be yet to clock the political turmoil in store for Labour over the next six months as it approaches its special conference, there is another issue to which Labour must pay attention if it is serious about winning: its polling. As we… Continue reading With Labour’s lead narrowing, the next election is now too close to call