The return of blue passports, or the royal yacht Brtiannia; gunboats being sent to Gibraltar; the return of imperial measures – it’s not difficult to see the world of Brexit Britain as a sort of contemporary version of Passport to Pimlico, with the symbolism of empire once again dominating Britain’s political discourse. And it is […]
Tag Archives: Tony Blair
Like, I would imagine, every single other Labour Party member, I have just received an email containing a Christmas message from Jeremy Corbyn. It is difficult to imagine a more complacent document; it almost appears to have issued from a parallel universe. Corbyn writes about how the Labour Party has signed more new members in […]
With the Tory Party apparently in meltdown following Ian Duncan Smith’s resignation, it’s easy to miss how the events of the past few days affect Labour too. I’ve already blogged about how the terms of Duncan Smith’s resignation letter expose the cuts and austerity agenda as a matter of political choice, not economic necessity; the […]
Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prizewinner in Economics and one of Jeremy Corbyn’s board of economic advisers, has claimed that the centre-left consensus of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband has now eroded. The claim was made in an interview with Labour List following his recent lecture as part of John McDonnell’s “New Economics” tour. According […]
As the year turns, the political commentators are preoccupied with Labour’s apparent difficulties. It’s hard to remember that in any normal times it would be the Tories that would be on the ropes. There are three key issues on which the Tories are, potentially, in the most serious trouble: On Europe, the Tories remain as […]
Today has seen the launch of a new, activist-inspired grouping within the Labour Party; Open Labour. It positions itself as an expression of the mainstream democratic Left within the Party. Its launch document, a letter in today’s Guardian, talks of the need for a clear anti-austerity stand from the Party, developed through open, constructive debate; it […]
As oratory, Hilary Benn’s speech in the House of Commons winding up for the opposition on the Government’s motion on Syria was something very special. The uninhibited passion was something that mainstream debate has lacked for a long time, especially from the Labour benches. It was greeted by applause from both sides of the House, […]
Tony Blair has made his second intervention in the Labour leadership election, in a piece in the Observer that accuses the Jeremy Corbyn campaign as being fantasy politics from the world of Alice in Wonderland. He writes: There is a politics of parallel reality going on, in which reason is an irritation, evidence a distraction, […]
Labour’s leadership campaign has turned into a far more fundamental debate than many would have predicted. The intervention of Jeremy Corbyn – nominated by, among others, a number of MPs who would not under any circumstances vote for him, in order to ensure a genuine debate – has turned what could have been a bland personality […]
Perhaps the most dispiriting feature of the Labour Party leadership economics has been the standard of – one is tempted to say the absence of – the economic debate. There is an emerging – and vague – narrative around the need to be more business-friendly, to reward “hard work”, to cut the deficit, to enable […]
Notes from a Broken Society 