Night time is exciting. It is scary and it is full of possibilities and it is, as Antoine de Saint Exupery wrote, when “words fade and things come alive. When all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again”. The thrill that comes from being abroad at night, up late when everyone else is sleeping and werewolves crawl in the parlour…
With the prospect of a General Election looming once again, many in Labour are panicking. Much of the debate is reaching a fever pitch within the Labour right amongst former Blairites, Brownites and social democrats who never truly accepted Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. As in early 2017, many dread the prospect of electoral annihilation, whereas others fear a Corbyn victory even more. The…
Britain’s Brexit battle and its associated skirmishes have dominated the news cycle for the last three years, and aside from occasional committee reports and cries of “traitor” from some quarters, this has forced certain issues, such as House of Lords reform, further out of the spotlight. Although the Labour Leadership last year reaffirmed plans to abolish the Lords, these have not been…
Though 2016 is often held to mark the dawn of the post-truth age, it must be said that the 2010-2015 coalition government had a nice line in rhetorical liberties. The Coalition’s policies resulted in swingeing cutbacks, marketisation of public services and outsourcing. The deliberate and vicious theme of ‘austerity’ – with its earnest 1940s echoes, it’s black-and-white heroics and stoicism in the…
Since the advent of devolution and the subsequent re-emergence of the independence movement, Scottish politics has changed beyond recognition. Successive elections and the Brexit process seem to suggest that Scottish and English politics are now on completely different trajectories, calling into question the stability of the union. Independence is now seen by many as an inevitability, with a recent poll showing only…
Jeremy Corbyn will not lead the Labour Party forever. This is true whether you think he is to step down within the next five months as opposition leader or within the next five to ten years as Prime Minister. The shape of the post-Corbyn left is, therefore, as yet undecided. The future is absolutely up for grabs. It is important to start…
When the Evening Standard unexpectedly fell in behind Boris Johnson for Conservative Party leader, Robert Peston tweeted an explanation as to perhaps why. It would seem that Boris Johnson and his wife used to take weekends away in a villa owned by Alexander Lebedev. In many ways Lebedev is a very standard Russian oligarch. He did shady dealings that, thanks to wild…
“The old forms of identity have worn out, so to speak, and the new ones have not yet appeared, and people are prospecting as it were in the desert for new forms.” – Saul Bellow, in conversation with Martin Amis “The old is dying, and the new cannot be born.” – Antonio Gramsci Such is the problem of Labour’s left at the…
