The Government’s response to the Covid-19 crisis has led to claims that the economic rule-book is being rewritten; that a Conservative Government has essentially rewritten the rules that have governed economic policy-making since 1979. The magic money tree has been found. There are even some courageous souls claiming that Sunak’s announcements of wage guarantees and […]
The Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has this evening announced that the Government will meet 80% of wage costs for workers to ensure that they keep their jobs during the coronavirus crisis. The package has already attracted criticism, because it does nothing for the self-employed and freelances. That point is well-made, but there is a deeper problem […]
With the Labour Party leadership election continuing to drag on – longer than Götterdämmerung but likely to bring much the same outcome for that benighted party – little attention has been given to the other British political leadership that will take place later this year – that for the leadership of the Liberal Democrats. It’s […]
I spent yesterday evening listening to a speech by the philosopher A C Grayling at a meeting in Bath, organised by Bath for Europe, on the subject of rejoining the EU (unfortunately I had to leave before the Q and A in order to stand a fighting chance of getting a train back to Cardiff). […]
Yesterday’s announcement from Whitehall that HS2 would proceed – at an estimated cost now of £100bn, a figure that seems likely to rise substantially – has opened a wide fault-line about the future of Wales and Welsh devolution. As Plaid Cymru MP Jonathan Edwards argues persuasively in a piece in Nation Cymru, the issues for […]
Leaving the Labour Party is not easy; nearly a year after the event, you still follow the debates, discuss things with your former comrades, still feel a certain emotional pull. The Labour Party is far too much like a family – admittedly one, to misquote Orwell, with the wrong members in control – for its […]
Among the twenty-four inscriptions that line the walls of the Scottish Parliament, one – attributed to Alasdair Gray but, as he freely admitted, borrowed from the Canadian poet Dennis Lee, seems hugely apposite to the position of we in Wales who still have faith in progressive politics: “Work as if you live in the early […]
For those of us in the movement to remain in the EU, this has been a grim few days. It appears inevitable that we will leave the EU on 31st January – and lose our freedom of movement, so many of our rights as citizens, our jobs and services. But, along the way, we did […]
The General Election that will take place on 12th December is the most important in modern British history. It is an election that will decide not just whether the UK leaves the European Union – and hence whether the Brexit project, a project of the far Right that aims to embed austerity, succeds: it is […]
Last night, the BBC’s Question Time was broadcast from Cardiff. Events leading up to the programme – as well as the programme itself – give rise to further questions about audience selection; an issue that has given rise to considerable concern over a long period. Inevitably, Brexit and the prorogation of Parliament were issues on […]
Notes from a Broken Society 