I have just been at the Conservative Friends of Israel Business Lunch, which can best be described as a triumphalist ‘smugfest’ in the wake of David Cameron’s bulldog moment in Europe last week. The Tory leadership should be very wary of this moment. We have just entered a period of unprecedented political division in this
In all the furore over Jeremy Clarkson’s ‘joke’ about shooting strikers, people can be forgiven for missing a second row over outrageous remarks made by a public figure. Paul Flynn is Labour MP for Newport West and known as a reasonable man of the left. Flynn is a campaigning MP who has asked some difficult
Nick Clegg should be congratulated for doing the right thing by reviving the Future Jobs Fund and the Young Person’s Guarantee, for that is what the Youth Contract is in all but name. This is, of course, another U-turn. As Chris Bryant tweeted rather brutally after Clegg’s announcement, if the government wanted to save young
Could it be that Matthew Taylor, the RSA’s chief executive, is even more influential in Downing Street today than he was when he was head of policy under Tony Blair? His latest blog post is certainly causing a huge stir. David Aaronovitch picked it up in yesterday’s Times and put a rocket under it. Matthew
Ed Miliband is in a bind. He really should be concentrating on the competence argument, but keeps falling back on the ‘evil Tory ideologue’ argument. There are several reasons for this. The first is his determination to distance himself from the Blair-Brown era. This makes it difficult to provide a convincing critique of policies which
There is a very peculiar passage in Ken Livingstone’s memoirs, “You Can’t Say That”, about a visit he made to Israel as leader of the GLC. He had been invited by the Socialist-Zionist party Mapam, which has since merged with Meretz. Livingstone had already been identified as someone who was hostile to Israel and so
Three young people start work in Westminster for the first time today. Breon Finch, Alice Hannam and Rachel Shackleton are the first apprentices at the Parliamentary Academy, a cross-party initiative to break open access to the nation’s seat of power for young people who can’t afford to do a lengthy unpaid internship. So hats off
The Fox-Werritty story took an interesting turn this week with the news that Conservative Party treasurer Howard Leigh had been soliciting funds from wealthy Jewish donors. The Jewish Chronicle had the story first. It was then “revealed” by the Guardian a day later, although, to be fair, they did put some serious meat on the
When things get rough, especially in the area foreign policy, I have the distinct feeling David Cameron asks himself the question “What would Tony do?” before he takes a big decision. But in the management of his Cabinet he can’t do that. Blair never had to deal with coalition politics and did not have the
Governments worth their salt know that a single young person out of work is a tragedy, but a million young people being on the dole is a political catastrophe. This week’s unemployment figures fall just short of that symbolically important figure. But they also put the coalition’s solutions in sharp focus. Ed Miliband did
Labour’s reshuffle is the best thing Ed Miliband has done since he became leader. I say this mainly because I am feeling very smug because I have been writing that the Labour Party should skip a generation for some time. I wrote (slightly too admiringly) about Chuka Umunna’s rising star in January 2009 when he
I have been so annoyed by Ed Miliband’s speech to Labour Party conference that I haven’t been able to bring myself to write about it. As the Tories gather in Manchester I should really be turning my thoughts to things Conservative, but I can’t stop thinking about last Tuesday. In Liverpool Labour loyalists kept telling
The Labour Conference 2011 has turned into a horrible misery-fest. What a daft idea to make the theme of the conference: “We’re really sorry, we won’t do it again”. At least it’s not the slogan, although it would have been more honest than “Fulfilling the Promise of Britain”. I agree with Steve Richards in the
It is now beyond question that Ed Miliband is moving his party to the left, or redefining the centre ground if you prefer, or drawing a line under the New Labour era. Or whatever. The latest symbolic move has been to back Palestinian statehood in advance of a vote at the UN. This is a
At the beginning of the conference season I mused on Twitter that these occasions were very tribal, but that I had never been able to work out what defined the Liberal Democrat tribe. I was bombarded by suggestions. Iain Martin bluntly wrote: “What is the Lib Dem tribe? Answer: A lot smaller than it used
Memories are short in journalism, but reading about the attempts by the Met to force the Guardian to hand over source material in the Hackgate case, reminded me of a case the same newspaper group fought over a decade ago. Bizarrely, the story isn’t in the Guardian’s online archive, which doesn’t go back far enough.
Watching the footage of the debates at the TUC this week can’t have been a happy experience for anyone on the left. I understand the leadership’s decision to hold an “austerity Congress”. I can also understand why the unions want to take the argument on cuts and pensions to the government. It is their job to
The coverage of Alistair Darling’s memoirs at the weekend was fascinating, not least for the almost universal respect he was shown. Some senior Labour figures tried the old “ancient history” line. But this was ridiculous given the fact that the events described are relatively recent and that they continue to have a profound effect on
Just as it looked as if Theresa May was about to do the right thing over the EDL march on Tower Hamlets, the Home Secretary decided to issue a blanket ban on all marches across five London boroughs for 30 days. The whole point for those of us advocating a ban in the EDL was
Great to hear that the police have formally applied to the Home Secretary to get the English Defence League march on Tower Hamlets banned. I’m something of a freedom of speech fundamentalist but this was an open invitation to violence. I have had my differences with East London Mosque and believe that it is a
