Every now and again I think back to the halcyon days of June and July – the sun was shining, Love Island graced our screens every night, and millions tuned into the World Cup to check in on the England men’s best performance since 1990. It felt like a golden time for the collective national mood, though certainly not for the collective…
The British state has been starved since 2010: methodically and deliberately. We were told that this was because the crash of 2008 devastated public finances. By now, it is clear this was merely an excuse to justify the ideologically-driven austerity agenda of George Osborne, who hacked away at the state with almost pathological zeal. The damage his actions have done to our…
The concept of Old Labour is vague, but comforting. It conjures up images of a time when values weren’t compromised. A time when the party knew what, and most importantly, who it stood for. Sustaining this legend requires a number of instances of racism at the core of Labour policy in both foreign and domestic spheres to be ignored, and a gross…
After Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party in 2015, Frank Field – who had nominated Corbyn – explained why his candidate had won the contest, and why UNISON leader Dave Prentiss had been wrong to suggest that Labour members had witnessed a “great debate” during the leadership campaign. “We had no such debate,” Field told Sky’s Dermot Murnaghan. “I…
I’ve lived near the railway all my life. Saying that may conjure up rose-tinted images of the Railway Children; the reality is more high-speed trains 50 feet from my back door rattling the glass on my desk every half hour. The village where I’ve lived and grown up these past 19 years sprung up in the 1850s around the railway station. At…
Ed Balls has written about how, during one campaign, Tony Blair had suggested to Gordon Brown that the party made a vow not to raise taxes. Balls, ever the problematic stepchild in that political marriage, countered that they could not make that promise, as they were bound to break it later when they raised taxes. Blair, of course, reacted with horror. It’s…
