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For some time, people have spoken about Labour’s “southern discomfort”: its seeming difficulty in making any headway in the critical marginals of the South-East. As the dust settled after the by-elections two weeks ago, it became clear that the net results were as bad, if not worse, for Labour as they were for the Tories,… Continue reading Labour now has a northern discomfort to add to its southern discomfort

The other day my friend John Rentoul helpfully pointed out an Australian counter-example to my last piece on leadership challenges: that Bob Hawke had won on the back of a usurpation (and, I now realise, was later usurped himself by Paul Keating), and it hadn’t done him any harm, in fact he went on to win four elections. In… Continue reading Leadership challenges: a coda

It is always a little unwise to make predictions, as us bloggers occasionally find some time later, to our shame and embarrassment. But perhaps we can venture one now. If there is a silly season within conference season, it is surely within Lib Dem conference. And this year, a few MPs and journalists have used… Continue reading Leadership challenge? You can’t be serious

While it seems Labour are busy doing all we can to leave the centre ground to the Tories, as the FT’s Janan Ganesh pointed out yesterday, they seem to be doing the same to us, in a bizarre “after you, Claude, no, after you, Cecil” stylee. This is nothing that new (in fact, I wrote about… Continue reading Human rights? Nah. I’ve got a party to placate.

I am pleased to report that the Mother of all Parliaments has finally decided that, although it was perfectly prepared for two hundred thousand Syrians to die over the last three years, a great many of whom have died since its vote on the matter last year, it has finally relented on military action in… Continue reading ISIL: can we just get this straight, please?

23 September, 2014: the culmination of four years as leader. Milliband’s last major pitch to lead the country, for this parliament at least. From now, time can only tell whether it has been the gateway to a whole new vista of politics for Miliband and the keys to No. 10; an attempt to convince his… Continue reading Ed’s speech needed to change the political weather. It didn’t

Last time a part of Britain wanted to become independent, we sent in the Black and Tans. This referendum really hasn’t gone that badly. My sixteenth piece for the Independent, making that point, is here.

While Westminster’s attention is distracted by Scotland, it is gradually becoming abundantly clear that the grooming of young, white girls by Pakistani-heritage men goes way beyond Rotherham. Last week Uncut’s Kevin Meagher highlighted the next few likely police targets in Greater Manchester and this Left Foot Forward piece gives a first-hand account of grooming in… Continue reading The Rotherham abuse is merely yet another facet of the disastrous biraderi politics Labour has nurtured

My fifteenth piece for the Independent, on the perennially dreadful Stoppers, is here. In this latest episode, they rather unpleasantly pretended that the IS threat to the Yazidis was “a false story”. When the male population of a whole village was decimated, this text magically disappeared from their website. Seems they struggle to criticise even… Continue reading The Stop the War Coalition should do us all a favour and disband

Last week in Iraq, American journalist James Foley was murdered by Islamic State. He was murdered savagely and painfully, and he was not even murdered in supposed punishment for a crime; it was merely to send a message to the West. If that were not enough, they then put a video of the whole killing… Continue reading This government has tacitly acknowledged its failure on anti-extremism. But Labour should examine its own conscience