Sir Digby Jones and trade unionism
Sir Digby Jones – former director of the Confederation of British Industry, pictured left – is to be upgraded to Lord, enabling him to serve as trade minister in Gordon Brown’s government of all the talents. Although he will take the Labour whip in the House of Lords, he is reportedly refusing to join the [...]
That Gordon Brown cabinet in full
Well, this is the deal. And I’ve got to knock out some stories about what it all means this afternoon. But the comments box is open for your assessments, hatchet jobs, interesting ‘did you know?’-type factoids, reminiscences of when these guys were in the same LPYS/NOLS/union branch, Trotskyist cell, Labour Party ward (or, in Shaun [...]
Gordon Brown and British business
Gordon Brown finally moves into Number Ten today, maintaining radio silence towards the left and towards organised labour. The Lib-Dems have been offered – and have spurned – cabinet positions, and a leading Tory has crossed the floor. Courting the business community has always been an integral aspect of the New Labour project, and Brown [...]
Miscellaneous Trot gossip
Here’s an intriguing tale from the Moscow Times website. It seems that the webmaster of the residual Russian CP is guilty of ideological deviationism, 1930s style: Anatoly Baranov, editor of the party’s web site, has been plotting to subvert party policy to reflect “the interests of pro-Western forces,” the party’s Central Audit Committee said a [...]
Gordon Brown ‘to cut union Labour conference role’
The man shortly to be the next prime minister of Britain doesn’t hang around, does he? Even before taking up the top job, Gordon Brown – pictured left – made some kind of half-arsed attempt to institute a Lib-Lab coalition nobody voted for. Now it appears he wants further to downgrade the role of unions [...]
SWP and Big Brother Carole
Mirror political editor Kevin Maguire – a man to watch under the Brown prime ministership, I’m told – cites this extract from an SWP internal document in his New Statesman diary column this week: Trot tantrums in the SWP’s weekly party notes under the intriguing head “Revolutionaries and Big Brother”. Walthamstow comrade Carole Vincent seemingly [...]
Clash T-shirt competition winners
And the winner is … (cue drumroll) … Alasdair Ross, one of all too few Labour councillors that are Clash/Billy Bragg fans. Congratulations. A set of four fine T-shirts is on its way. The runner-up is Jason of Sicknote fame, who gets an extra shirt largely because of the sheer volume of his entries. Once [...]
The CIA and the US left
The US Central Intelligence Agency will shortly declassify hundreds of documents detailing illegal activities from the 1950s to 1970s. OK, that makes the revelations anything from three to five decades after the events. But even disclosures on this delayed time scale may prove rather more frank than anything we would conceivably be allowed to know [...]
What Tony Blair should realise about the Middle East
It looks like Tony Blair has got a new job sorted for himself once he steps down as prime minister next week. George Bush has asked him to become the Quartet’s special envoy to the Middle East, and the indications are that Blair will take up the offer. If you want an instant mission statement, [...]
Gordon Brown ‘to give cabinet jobs to Lib-Dems’
Gordon Brown is due to name his cabinet a week today. And it is looking increasingly possible that when the announcement comes, Britain will have a de facto Lib-Lab coalition government for the first time in three decades. Late last month I commented on an article by Sky political editor Adam Boulton in the New [...]
