For anyone following the story about Andy Burnham’s negotiations with the government on behalf of Greater Manchester, it is easy to dismiss it as “playing politics” and many have in recent days. Easy, that is, until you read this: This is letter sent to Greater Manchester council leaders: Govt offering them £22m for 2.8m ppl… Continue reading Manchester’s punishment beating
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We need to talk about where the trans self-id debate is taking Labour
Last Tuesday, Deputy Leader Angela Rayner stated her view that Rosie Duffield – yes, the Rosie Duffield who has been a champion of women’s rights and bravely declared her own domestic abuse story to Parliament – should “reflect” on the fact that she had “liked” a tweet which described transgender people as “cross-dressers”. Although Rayner… Continue reading We need to talk about where the trans self-id debate is taking Labour
Crank Labour stops pretending: and a rather important meeting
As Keir Starmer puts in two commendable first performances at PMQs, so the upper echelons of the Corbynite house of cards, thankfully, continue to collapse. The Crank Labour caucus has largely reverted to type in an overt way: one wild fringe in a Zoom conference a couple of weeks back claimed that Labour is institutionally… Continue reading Crank Labour stops pretending: and a rather important meeting
The Corbynite leadership’s final, scorched-earth, rearguard action
It was all going so well: but a matter of days following the election of Keir Starmer as Labour’s new leader and it is convulsing itself over the scandal of a report, leaked widely, containing sensitive, personal information and also making serious allegations about current and past staffers, not to mention various members and non-members.… Continue reading The Corbynite leadership’s final, scorched-earth, rearguard action
The party, the party, the party: an eight-point plan to save Labour from itself
We have now had the Shadow Cabinet appointments. While a few have raised eyebrows among moderates – not least the reappearance of that self-same Miliband who helped get us into this mess in the first place – it is not a bad selection from the limited numbers of available MPs. Its significance will be dissected… Continue reading The party, the party, the party: an eight-point plan to save Labour from itself
Coronavirus in Hungary: the perfect distraction for an anti-democrat to make his move
For nearly a decade, the Centre Left has been writing periodically about the unpleasant regime of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, and how it would likely end up as the first dictatorship inside the EU: starting with a ropey media law his government enacted in that year, passing through a blind eye to anti-Semitsim and a suspiciously… Continue reading Coronavirus in Hungary: the perfect distraction for an anti-democrat to make his move
This past few weeks have only confirmed Corbynite Labour’s unfitness to govern
And so, while not wanting to be complacent, many of us dare to hope that the shutters are finally lifting on the Corbynite era, where the openly continuity-Corbyn candidates seem poised to lose in both Leader and Deputy Leader elections.The beginning of the end, fingers crossed.Even were that not the case, it seems that the… Continue reading This past few weeks have only confirmed Corbynite Labour’s unfitness to govern
We like you, Lisa Nandy, so why are you throwing women under a bus?
Current Labour leadership campaign status: both cautiously encouraging, and flat-out disappointing. Encouraging, because the nominations stage is making it look like the far left – in the shape of Burgon, Butler and Long-Bailey might finally, finally be on the back foot (that said, the actual vote for leader is likely to be far tighter and… Continue reading We like you, Lisa Nandy, so why are you throwing women under a bus?
Labour, co-owner of #brexitshambles
We are out. That’s it, the fat lady has sung. But of course we are not out at all, not in any meaningful sense. This is just the start of a tortuous, eleven-month scramble to try and get some kind of a sensible result in place by the end of the year. Remainers have to… Continue reading Labour, co-owner of #brexitshambles
Dear hard left: you broke it, you own it.
After such a defeat, there has been extraordinarily little soul-searching by the Corbynite left, in case we should have expected any. To go by some of the comments by frontbenchers and their media outriders, it is apparently the people who have erred, not the Labour party, rather recalling Brecht’s satirical poem about “dissolving the people… Continue reading Dear hard left: you broke it, you own it.