There is nothing those who spend far too much time thinking and tweeting about politics like more than a chance to look like they’re engaging in a national cultural event (one everyone else might also be talking about). The word “hinterland” is flashing like a neon sign in our hindbrains. A chance to look normal – this is all we ask.
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Idon’t know what Rishi Sunak’s wife looks like. I don’t know who her favourite band is or which football team she supports. Nor do I care and nor is it my business. If journalists or comedians were making bad jokes about Sunak’s family, that would allow him a perfect right to be as indignant about it as he likes. He’s public property – she isn’t.
But that’s not what’s happening when Sunak is being asked questions about his wife’s business with Russian companies. In this case, a senior law-maker is being asked about his close ties to those dealing with Russian businesses as his government decides on and imposes sanctions on that country.
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The situation in Ukraine – and the response of its people from Zelensky downwards – has shown that a positive narrative of national identity is perfectly possible. Neither does it have to be denied to achieve a sense of international solidarity or national change and development.
Now is the perfect time for progressive people in the UK to ask how we too could adopt this narrative of national solidarity to build a better future.
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he Labour Party has had lots of really good news lately. Its national polling lead has grown and seems stable against an imploding Tory party. Recent polling by the Fabian Society and YouGov show them even further ahead in their target seats in England and Wales. There’s work to do, but also real cause for optimism and positivity.
This is a great place for Keir Starmer and his party to be at, going into the new year. But you might not know it from the behaviour of some of his most ardent supporters, especially on social media. They seem determined to remain angry – if not gloomy – playing out the fights of the Jeremy Corbyn years internally rather than playing a bigger part in building a positive, self-confident and united party.
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RWriting in the New Statesman this week, former prime minister Tony Blair said, “the Labour Party needs complete deconstruction and reconstruction. Nothing less will do.” His vision seizes on the challenges posed by the technological industrial revolution as “tailor-made for the progressive cause”, and urges “reason and moderation” as weapons to resolve the culture wars which are ravaging the Left. Keir Starmer’s party of 2021 is confusing “abiding values with outdated mechanisms”, he writes. Is he right? Can anything less than a back-to-the-drawing-board approach save Labour?
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We're about to start hugging again. The London Mayor has announced a summer of fun. He won't be the only one longing to get a bit of joy into our lives.
This country, like the rest of the world, has been through hell over the last 14 months. The desperate desire for a break, for a release, for a bit of hedonism is tangible. We aren’t yet ready to look back soberly on the pandemic and the response to it. For now, we just want to forget our troubles and get happy.
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In the last proper episode of the long-running American soap opera Dallas, arch bad guy JR Ewing is shown what the world would look like if he didn’t exist. Unlike its inspiration, It’s a Wonderful Life, his closest family and friends are happier, more successful and better off without him.
I was reminded of this childhood TV moment when thinking about Donald Trump and his role in global public life over the past decade. I frankly fail to see how anyone wouldn’t be better off if he had just made money instead of headlines – neither the people who have been hurt by his Government; nor even his fervent supporters, some of whom now face jail for allowing that support to fester into insurrection and violence.
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The further left reaches of Twitter are angry at a member of the Labour leadership. Must be a day with ‘day’ in the name.
This time, it’s Angela Rayner who is being wilfully misunderstood by those who remain completely unreconciled with change at the top of the Labour Party. Her crime was seeming to praise Margaret Thatcher in her wide-ranging closing discussion at the Fabian conference this weekend.
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A new poll carried out by Survation and commissioned by We Own It has found that 59% of the public think that the way the government has handled procurement during the pandemic has been corrupt.
This comes in response to the ‘high priority lane’ identified in a National Audit Office report. This lane prioritised leads from Ministers, MPs, Peers and those with connections to government as more credible. These companies were ten times more likely to win contracts than those who were not in the high priority lane.
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In an exchange about the Labour Party recently I bemoaned the fact the Labour left had no competence and the Labour right no ideas. So far Keir Starmer’s approach has not been about new ideas, but about absolutely hammering home the competence message. It makes a very refreshing change.
The Labour left, at least the very public part of it, has not responded well to its defeat. None of the key “outriders” — those media activists who fought for Corbyn — has the gift of genuine self-criticism, so you get weak beer such as “Jeremy isn’t anti-Semitic but…” which is the closest most of them will get to acknowledging anything went wrong at all.
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I used to be a member of the union Unite. I signed up because I believe in the value of collectivism and, having done an internet search, I felt that Unite were best placed to represent me in my small (6 people) workplace.
Two years after I got my job, my six person workplace had been bought and consumed into a much bigger entity. I was in now a mid-sized, non-organised, private sector workplace and I was going through a reorganisation process I was pretty sure would end up with me losing my job. So I called the union I was paying a not insignificant amount of money to every month, to ask for some representation in the meetings. “Sorry, we don’t do that,” was the answer.
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It’s a truism, but Twitter isn’t real life. The disparity between the conversations of the online extremes, the extremely online and the rest of the country becomes ever clearer.
The last office of the leader of the opposition did not seem to realise this though. It is striking how often in Left Out — the compelling book by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund about the Corbyn years — the number of Twitter followers a politician has is mentioned when discussing their potential suitability for a role. These days, you simply cannot see this being a factor in Keir Starmer’s decision-making. He actively avoids commenting on the Twitter drama of the week.
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There is little in this world that makes me as angry as the tragedy of the Grenfell Tower, the events leading up to it and the governmental and local governmental response to it.
I say that in light of the fact that Donald Trump is president, Boris Johnson is Prime Minister, government politicians are standing up and declaring their intention to break the law and — at least in part thanks to this government’s incompetence — our lives are being restricted once again. To make me more angry than all of that takes some doing.
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The Liberal Democrats have elected the more moderate of the two candidates for leader. As Jennie Rigg said this morning, there was a choice between radical liberalism and pragmatic centralism. By a margin of nearly two to one, they opted for the latter.
Since taking part in the coalition government, the Lib Dems have struggled to be seen as a radical party. There has always been a tension within the party between their radical and more ‘small c’ conservative wings. This is usually resolved by their hyper-localism, which has long allowed them to be the party of both Moran and Davey.
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