The sabre-rattling about cutting donations to Labour Party funds. The attack on those frightening people at Progress who seem hell-bent on doing unspeakable things, like building support in no-hope seats, helping local parties raise funds or debating ideas for getting the party elected. Ah, we must be coming into conference season. Now, to be fair,… Continue reading No time for foolishness
Author: robert.marchant
We shouldn’t stop at Responsibility To Protect
There have been plenty of column inches in recent weeks dedicated to why the world should intervene in Syria: for most of us the unspeakable pictures of children with their throats cut from the massacre in Houla is enough. It seems undeniable that the world should do something in the face of genocide or likely… Continue reading We shouldn’t stop at Responsibility To Protect
The Guardian reaches a new low (ii)
Gobsmacked, I think is a fair way to describe my feelings. Sorry to rant, but it’s hard not to be indignant at this. After Raed Salah, I really thought it wasn’t possible for the Guardian to become more idiotic, and more openly tolerant of racism, in its invitations to guest writers. Silly old me. Yes,… Continue reading The Guardian reaches a new low (ii)
Labour and anti-semitism: a good start, but not enough
I know this happened a couple of weeks back now, but I just wanted to comment on Ed Miliband’s piece in the New Statesman, where he uses his Jewish heritage to try to rebuild bridges with London’s Jewish community after the disaster of Ken Livingstone’s relationship with them over recent years, which started to go… Continue reading Labour and anti-semitism: a good start, but not enough
Why Tories should worry about David Cameron
I don’t hate Tories. I’m sorry if this is a terrible admission for a Labour man, but there it is. I think that their values are different from mine; really, I merely want us to win and them to lose. And there are some things which do, and should, transcend party politics. We should be… Continue reading Why Tories should worry about David Cameron
Without a revival in the south there will be no new Labour government
It is spring, two years into a parliament, and an activist’s mind turns to…elections (well, we are an odd lot). Candidates start to be chosen and campaigns planned. We have a much clearer idea of what kind of opponents we will be up against in 2015. A new leadership finds its feet and gets to… Continue reading Without a revival in the south there will be no new Labour government
This voter registration drive. Why, exactly?
High turnout is good. It is an unequivocal Good Thing. In fact, it is perhaps the only social good to which all democrats – at least technically – aspire, because it affirms our faith in our chosen system; a metric for the distance we stand from chaos. In other words: reach a turnout of zero,… Continue reading This voter registration drive. Why, exactly?
The status quo in London is not an option
As the post-election dust settles, we must hope that the party is, somewhere, currently holding a quiet post-mortem, to take away the lessons for next time. There are many positives we can take away, of course: that the locals went swimmingly and so did the London Assembly. And that we held Glasgow, that vital first… Continue reading The status quo in London is not an option
The left’s tale of two cities
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” – Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two CitiesThere seemed to be eerie echoes of Dickens’ words last weekend in the parallel events in those same cities of London and Paris. It… Continue reading The left’s tale of two cities
A last word on Livingstone
Yesterday morning I watched Livingstone’s runner-up speech (you can see the whole five minutes here). Although there were moments when it was difficult not to feel human sympathy with a man confronted with the humiliation of what was an extremely personal defeat, at the same time it seems that his extraordinary lack of self-awareness stayed… Continue reading A last word on Livingstone