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Scotland, intrigue and laying ghosts to rest. Surely the only thingsmissing from this story were the witches and Lady Macbeth. Two weeks ago, in all of the excitement of Ed Miliband’s surprisingly successful bid to reform Labour party power structures, a parallel development was almost buried in the bigger story, apart from at the Guardian,… Continue reading Falkirk: an epilogue

Since a student protest on Thursday ended in violence (from a reportedly small group after the main, peaceful demonstration had dispersed), Venezuela is looking even worse than usual. On Friday, Twitter users were reportedly having online images blocked by the government, presumably to avoid photo evidence of brutality being transmitted via mobile phones. My friends at Harry’s Place also document… Continue reading Venezuela on the edge

It has been a rollercoaster couple of weeks for Labour. It started with Miliband’s ideas on how to change competition in banking, and ran through Balls’ announcement on fiscal probity, of which the only story newspapers wanted to print was about the retention of the 50p tax rate. Indeed, the economic story that they tell… Continue reading If party reform goes through as advertised, it is a major triumph. But it ain’t over till it’s over

It would be hilarious, if not for a certain sense of foreboding, that Viktor Yanukovych, in a certain crunch moment of the history of his country, has called in sick with a respiratory infection. Gosh, it’s as if he were playing for time in some way. As the NYT notes, it is an old trick from Soviet… Continue reading After Sochi

So, Labour has announced at the weekend that it will keep the 50p tax rate. *Sigh.*Even though Balls’ commitment to balancing the books is to be applauded (three years late, but better late than never) and although the economics is ok in terms of paying down the debt (if in fact it raises money, which some… Continue reading 50p and all that

I may have read this wrong, but I have an increasing sense of foreboding that the long-running “Euromaidan” occupation in Kyiv is not going to end well. Yes, Yanukovych has agreed to come to the negotiating table – he has even offered a prime ministerial job to one of the opposition leaders – but I… Continue reading Alarm bells in the Ukraine

 Picture courtesy the brilliant @GeneralBoles The opportunity for Labour to score party points against the Tories on the economy is clearly diminishing. While that is difficult rather than disastrous, our reaction is important. Last week, FT’s Janan Ganesh tweeted a characteristically shrewd observation: influenced by campaign groups, Labour seemed to have furthermore abdicated responsibility for… Continue reading Labour needs to stop fiddling and get on with the big stuff

With the world’s apparent disengagement from politics-as-usual,  it is tempting to think that traditional  politics is dying and there is something new happening. Broadly, there is, but it  may not be quite what we think. In 2011, a movement called Occupy was born. It was  a grassroots political movement –inspired by the  Spanish “Indignados” and the so-called “Arab… Continue reading Politics 2.0?

Vivien Leigh as Blanche Dubois in “A Streetcar Named Desire” Recently there seems to have been an odd acceptance by some right-wing commentators that Britain is to “sleepwalk to a Labour win”, as the Telegraph’s Matthew D’Ancona put it. It may be a genuine belief, rather than a way of giving Cameron a sly wake-up… Continue reading The kindness of strangers

So, it’s that time of year again when we pick out the most viewed pieces at The Centre Left.  This year, what’s been encouraging to see is that, where in the past my most viewed pieces have often been at group blogs such as LabourList, Labour Uncut or elsewhere, in 2013 this little blog has… Continue reading The best of 2013