The best of 2015

And so we come to the traditional year-end round-up of the Centre Left’s most popular posts:

5. Five dangers for Labour as the finish line approaches – In those heady days when we had merely slightly-hopeless Ed Miliband rather than disastrous Jeremy Corbyn as party leader, there was actually a time when many felt that Miliband was on track to become Prime Minister. Yes, thanks to some fairly serious differences between pre-election polling and the final result, many languished under that comfortable delusion. The Centre Left did not, even though even this blog did not fully appreciate the scale of defeat which awaited us.

4. The Muslim Manifesto and Labour’s useful idiots – In March, a few signs of the madness currently gripping the national party started to make themselves evident. Here we had a (thankfully small) group of MPs inviting a hate-preacher to speak in Parliament, a clear indication of The Madness. With well-known Hamas sympathisers Andy Slaughter and Yasmin Qureshi leading the charge – thanks, guys.

3. Why backbenchers talking to terrorists is not the same as senior politicians talking to terrorists: a primer Later, during the leadership election, many attempted to defend Corbyn’s association with terrorists by comparing it to the UK government talking to the IRA. This piece looked to gently explain why that argument is rubbish.

2. Tory fumbles put Labour back in the race – A few weeks before the general election saw the Tories wobble with a few serious gaffes. It put Labour back in the race in everyone’s minds, only to have our hopes cruelly dashed on election night itself.

And, at Number One:

1. “Unite is proud to associate itself with Lutfur Rahman” – Or thus spake Andrew Murray, right-hand man to Len McCluskey and the leader’s Chief of Staff at the Unite union. Only he turned out to be wrong when McCluskey changed his mind. Rahman, of course, was stripped of his office as Mayor of Tower Hamlets in April, after an electoral court convicted him of electoral fraud. What a sweet, sweet day was that for some of us (well, he did once try to have me arrested).

That’s it – a very happy New Year to all Centre Left readers, after a year when we actually broke into the top 40 of UK political blogs for the first time. Thanks for all your support, we’ll be here as long as you keep reading.