Author: robert.marchant

With the infiltration of jihadist groups into Syrian rebel forces, it was only a matter of time before they responded to Assad’s massacres in kind, as it now appears they did during August in some Alawite villages. Back in our own country and the US, depressingly, rebel killings will now be taken as retrospective justification… Continue reading Syria: no, we are not better off now

I wrote this conference conclusion piece a week ago for Labour Uncut and forgot to repost it here, but I think it still applies perfectly.Bottom line is that the next six months look set to be fairly momentous in the party’s history.

A few days on from the reshuffle of all three parties’ ministerial or Shadow teams, a little perspective on Labour’s, or what seems to have universally become known as the “Blairite cull”. Jim Murphy, who was merely moved on from Defence to a rather less important department, DFID, is now clearly the only remaining outrider… Continue reading Last Blairite standing: watch out for the sharks

Thanks to the Daily Mail’s rather unpleasant and ill-conceived trashing (“The Man Who Hated Britain”) of Ed Miliband’s Marxist father, Ralph Miliband, Tory party conference seems to have been rather eclipsed by the fallout from the piece, which has led to overwhelming support for Miliband. What is most amusing is the “glass houses” element that… Continue reading The indefatigable Daily Mail

Think I’ve probably already mentioned this but, just in case, I have authored Chapter Two of this fine tome, Labour manifesto: uncut, now available for download here. Called Leadership and party, it’s an essay on how, tricky though the whole party reform agenda is, it’s thoroughly worth doing, should be extended to other areas and could even… Continue reading Labour Uncut book now available for download

The political commentariat is confused about Miliband’s speech, not to mention the conference itself. Opinions seem to range from triumph to disaster, although the “disaster” ones seem to be mostly of the Daily Mail’s “red menace in our society” variety. And that’s not surprising, as both speech and conference were good in parts. But that’s… Continue reading Curate’s egg conference, but the real one’s in six months’ time

Where it all started I wrote this piece last weekend, before Tuesday’s party conference speech, explaining why Ed Miliband both really needs to make party reform work and why it could actually help his leadership ratings to deliver on it. I’ll post what I thought of the speech later. The next few days will be… Continue reading Leadership and party: how Ed can use one to revitalise the other

An occasional Centre Left series which tends to happen whenever I get the chance to go anywhere. I don’t get out much, y’see. It’s been a while, Brighton. As my grandparents’ home for the first twenty years or so of my life, it’s a bit like coming back to see an old friend, who you… Continue reading The Centre Left goes to…Brighton!

My ninth piece for the Independent, on the exclusive polling for the Uncut pamphlet we are publishing on Monday in Brighton is here, with the full tables in the Labour Uncut version here. The story made the Indy’s news pages and I even got a namecheck in the newspaper, I think. Gosh. Bottom line: there’s a lot of scaremongering… Continue reading Primaries don’t break the bank and a majority of Labour supporters would take part

Yesterday Ed Miliband made the first of two rather important speeches (the other due in two weeks at party conference) about the reform of his party’s relationship with its affiliated unions, an initiative on whose success his leadership now clearly depends.There are three – in my view – incorrect points of view which have surfaced… Continue reading Miliband at the TUC, a story few seem to be reading correctly