Labour's response to the budget shows the party's irrelevence
Budgets are generally there to do two jobs: to define the priorities of the government and set traps for the opposition. This Budget delivered on both — for now. That it was delivered during a crisis that is likely to have a significant and damaging impact on our economy wasn’t lost, but didn’t feel like the big story. For now, the response has largely been driven by standard politics.
Rishi Sunak’s calm and polished delivery seems to have calmed Tory nerves after an early rebellion over Huawei slashed the government’s majority. But massive programmes of government borrowing and spending aren’t a natural policy offering for Tories. If the economy — as seems almost inevitable — takes a hit this year, this change might find it has fewer champions than is currently the case.
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Rebecca Long Bailey: why she must step out of Corbyn's shadow
Most people were always going to view Rebecca Long-Bailey’s bid for Labour’s top job through the lens of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. That meant some members would never get behind his chosen successor, while others were destined to vote for Long-Bailey come what may.
The contest to replace a leader as polarising as Corbyn was always going to have that effect. On some occasions, Long-Bailey has struggled to break out of the straitjacket of being seen as the continuity candidate. On others, she has actively leaned into it, as when she was recently interviewed by Corbyn for a campaign video.
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Lisa Nandy: a Leadership candidate who thinks for herself
If you ask people in the Labour Party for one word that defines Lisa Nandy, many of them would respond with “Towns”. She set up the Centre for Towns and has long advocated an economic rebalancing to support places like her constituency of Wigan, which she has represented since 2010. If this campaign were going to be won on the meme game alone, Nandy would triumph hands down, thanks to her presence across Twitter and Facebook.
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Richard Burgeon is right - we need more political education
Political education has long been a feature of the broad left. In part, this is because they — rightly — feel that most sources of information tend to have a rightward bias. What’s more, the further left you are, the more you feel this to be true.
The truth is that the press has its political leanings and on the whole, it tends to the right. While I don’t buy the line that the BBC is also biased — either to right or left — they do take some of their hierarchy of content from what is reported in the papers, which only enhances the problem.
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Want Labour to do well? Stop arguing over this man
Imagine for a moment that you are interviewing to become the CEO of a large, established company. The company has had a great deal of success in the recent past but is now struggling. It has lost its way it is your aim in your interview to help it find it again. In the meantime, its main competitor has reinvented itself—moving from its once stuffy and conservative approach to one of breath-taking audacity. You may be convinced this approach will soon fail based on its internal contradictions, but for now, they are stealing your once loyal customer base.
When preparing the inevitable presentation that will come with the job interview, you will be given all sorts of advice for the role. Some of that will come from people who have done the job before you. They know the organisation and its customers inside out and they were once extremely successful at bringing one to the other. Sure, it was in the days before Facebook was even a thing and Brexit changed everything. But that doesn’t mean that their approach isn’t worth a glance.
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Claims that Londoners are unfriendly are wrong and feed a more harmful agenda
Over the weekend I went out with two of my best friends. One grew up in Hove, the other in Southampton. I sometimes joke that I’m the only Londoner I know who was actually born here. That isn’t true, but like many such jokes it has enough of the ring of truth.
London is a vast metropolis and because of the appalling economic imbalance of the UK, people are drawn here from all over the country. Also, because we are a leading economic power (for now) people are drawn here from all over the world. It’s part of what makes London so vibrant and interesting. There’s not a language you won’t hear or a cuisine you can’t find. Every weekend you can hear the music of hundreds of cultures or experience the art of a dozen different peoples.
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They come to praise Jeremy, not to bury him
The Labour leadership race is still only just getting started. No . . . really. It may feel like it’s gone on for longer than the Cold War, but actually we still have seven weeks of this contest left to run. We’re currently in the no-man’s land between the nominations stage, which saw Emily Thornberry just fail to make the cut, and the ballots landing on members’ doormats on February 21. The actual contest doesn’t end until the April 4. We will be more than a quarter of the way through the Brexit transition year before Labour gets a fresh voice in Parliament.
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Labour isn't electing the next PM - it's electing the next Neil Kinnock
Recently, much of the discussion in the Labour leadership contest has focused on the need to abandon factionalism — the current front-runner, Keir Starmer, is the latest to make that point. But despite the warm words from all the candidates, it is not certain whether this is possible or desirable, and, if it is, who will make it happen.
There is a sense from many Labour members and supporters that they are not electing the next Prime Minister, but someone to reprise the role of Neil Kinnock. The next Labour leader won’t necessarily be the one to get the party over the line and into Number 10, but the person who will do the hard work of making the party functional again. The next election will not be “one more heave” — the party isn’t in a shape to do that at present. Unfortunately, for members and MPs alike, at almost every level Labour isn’t working.
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Forget Momentum - most Labour members are moderates
he next three months are going to be about the clear divisions in the Labour Party. It’s obviously a very broad church with two very separate and vocal wings. But despite what it may seem like on social media — or what it can feel like at meetings — members of the Labour Party do have a fair amount in common. Most Labour members actually sit between the extremes that caricature the endless internal wars in the party.
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The next Labour leader must resist the temptation to scrap or keep Corbynism completely
Two phrases are dominating the left of the Labour leadership contest: “continuity Corbyn” and “Corbynism without Corbyn”.
The former is straightforward and aimed particularly at Rebecca Long Bailey; the idea being that her pitch so far has been to offer nothing different from Corbyn politically or stylistically. This has been bolstered by her hiring Momentum chief Jon Lansman to direct her campaign, as well as her awarding Corbyn 10/10 for his leadership skills (a rating I’m not sure he’d even have given himself). While her team do not use the phrase, it’s certainly the quite loud subtext of their pitch.
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The one phrase Labour's new leader should ban if they want to win votes
At the end of last year, the voters returned a pretty damning judgement on Jeremy Corbyn and the wider Labour Party. But often, what was heard on doorsteps was that voters felt judged by Labour: on social issues, on Brexit, on the kind of lives they were living and providing for their families.
Labour leadership candidate Lisa Nandy has described Labour’s approach at the recent general election as ‘too paternalistic’ and she’s not wrong. But it wasn’t just the endless, unbelievable giveaways promised that left the electorate feeling disempowered. It was the sense of fatherly disapproval that voters felt from Labour. It’s a particular type of paternalism—the kind that always makes you think of the phrase “You’re not going out dressed like that!”
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This is the time of year we all start thinking about self-improvement. Shifting the excess weight we added over Christmas. Finally joining the gym. Personally I have decided this is going to be the year I learn how to Rhumba.
But there are other ways of improving your own lot and that of others.
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How weight loss surgery saved my life
Idon’’t remember a time when I didn’t feel fat. While I started piling on the pounds in my late teens, I was teased as young as eight for being chubby. The idea stuck. I remember overhearing my mum saying that she was worried I would get anorexia: I didn’t even know what that was. Suffice to say, I never did. I felt fat long before I truly had a fat body, but eventually the latter caught up with the former. I tried to diet on and off from my late teens to my late 30s, but nothing stuck. I was deeply, painfully unhappy.
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What Labour loves most - a big internal fight
Well it’s a new year. Time for a new start for the Labour Party? Sort of. Next week the ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) will set out the rules for the leadership contest that is set to take place over the next three months.
At the moment it’s all about the horse race. Who’s up? Who’s down? Who’s running? Those either declared or discussed include Keir Starmer, Rebecca Long-Bailey, Lisa Nandy, Clive Lewis, Ian Lavery and Jess Phillips. These represent the whole of the party from the moderate to Corbynite wings and everything in between.
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Who speaks for Labour?
Last week, one of the major Corbyn cheerleading sites — Sqwarkbox — lost a libel suit against (now former) Labour MP Anna Turley. That Turley had to be embroiled in this during the election is bad enough. The Unite union has said it is going to fund an appeal on behalf of Sqwarkbox.
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