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What happens if normal party politics has broken down? One suspects this is the question most commentators have been asking themselves for the last several months, consciously or unwittingly, as British politics lurches from one unprecedented situation to another. If we needed proof, it is surely in the bizarre events of the last couple of… Continue reading The mother of all filibusters

The first thing to observe about the current political situation in Britain is that it is incredibly difficult to predict. At every point of the mathematical decision tree, there are unknowns and strange distortions (more of that later). So the starting point for us, like Sophocles, is this: the only thing we know is that… Continue reading A glimmer of sunlight for Britain and for Labour

You will recall how, a few months ago, a certain party leader furiously denied, then in the end implicitly accepted, that he laid a wreath at the grave of Palestinian terrorists: essentially in the face of overwhelming evidence that he did just that. Thanks to the painstaking work of some ordinary folk, as well as… Continue reading The tragi-comic end of Wreathgate is a timely reminder of how far British politics has fallen

by Rob Marchant If last year’s party conference was an unabashed love-in for Corbynites and the party’s leader, this was the conference where – as always happens eventually in all environments where the far left runs the show – the cracks started to appear. Ok, it may not be enough to stop the party from… Continue reading Tiny step by tiny step, the unions reassert themselves as ballast against the hard left

Just this, really. Labour’s leader has lied on national television about his involvement with terrorist-linked organisations. If it were a normal political party and had not become a strange personality cult, its leader would have already been pressured to resign. Discuss. — Rob Marchant (@rob_marchant) August 13, 2018 We might also add that, in an… Continue reading Labour leader lies

With all the stories in recent weeks about Labour and anti-Semitism, it would be understandable if some members started to suffer some kind of “Jewish fatigue”. But the reason for coming back to it is simple: normal Labour politics is currently suspended, as people gaze on in horror at the internal, self-inflicted crisis currently unfolding.… Continue reading Wonder why Britain’s Jewish community doesn’t trust Corbyn?

Jeremy Corbyn has really not had a good week. It was the week when the dam really finally burst on anti-Semitism, with the PLP wholeheartedly rejecting the party’s “doctored” definition of anti-Semitism, one-third of British voters surveyed thinking him an anti-Semite and an unprecedented and scathing joint editorial on the front page of the UK’s… Continue reading Corbyn’s ill-judged reaction to Margaret Hodge’s comments may just become his undoing

I realise that the Centre Left has been more than a little focused recently on the continuing slow implosion of the Labour Party, however what is happening on the world stage right now as a result of the Trump-Putin and NATO summits is both significant and deeply disturbing.The president of the United States has not… Continue reading Montenegro

The original #EnoughisEnough demo against anti-Semitism, March 2018 What with the Cabinet crisis, NATO summit, Trump visit and World Cup, it is easy to pass over some events in the Labour Party which could be accurately described as momentous. And not in a good way. Last week may have been the week where the Corbyn… Continue reading Labour and anti-Semitism: enough really is enough

It is somewhat inevitable, in the current, febrile political climate, that Tony Blair’s few interventions elicit disproportionate responses in Britain. Even when those interventions conclude little that most Western commentators outside Britain, or a European historian of average talent, would disagree with. In part, this is because in Britain the unspoken May-Corbyn alliance on Brexit… Continue reading Corbyn fiddles while Europe, and the world, reach for the matches