Politics then and now
Erstwhile radicals who drift rightwards in middle age are too plentiful to need exemplification. Their ranks include a fair chunk of leading Labour politicians and trade union leaders, for starters. Then again, the world has changed tremendously over the last quarter of a century, say. Political analysis has to keep pace. Just because somebody advanced [...]
Iran: neither Washington nor mosque
Only two parties contest the majority of seats in today’s parliamentary elections in Iran; voters face the tough call of whether to back the United Fundamentalist Front or the Inclusive Fundamentalist Coalition. It’s almost tempting to conclude that the IFC came up with its cuddly choice of moniker on account of a wry sense of [...]
Eliot Spitzer: in defence of Client 9
There are streets in London – some within easy walking distance of my flat – where a hand job reportedly comes cheaper than a packet of cigarettes; more than likely, there are streets like that in New York as well. But state governors obviously can’t go kerb-crawling down whatever qualifies as the Big Apple equivalent [...]
London elections: the far left case for a Labour vote
Unstinting Labour loyalist that I am, I will of course be backing Ken Livingstone in the London mayoral contest. I will also smilingly vote for whatever pack of chainstore-suited neoliberal Stepford Wives and ‘I speak your weight’ machines that must by now have emerged to make up my party’s list of Greater London Assembly candidates. [...]
God save the Queen
Silver Ring Thing is an evangelical Christian initiative that arm-twists adolescents into pledging to remain virgins until their wedding day. Some hope. Rampaging hormonal imbalances being what they are, most of them are merrily rutting away not too much later. I suspect that, if ever implemented, Lord Goldsmith’s wheeze of getting the same age group [...]
John Hutton speech: Labour’s schoolgirl crush on the super-rich
Peter Mandelson famously proclaimed in 1998 that New Labour was ‘intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich’. One decade later, the government’s mood is not just chilled out but positively euphoric. That’s the clear message in a speech that business and enterprise secretary John Hutton – pictured – will deliver tomorrow, anyhow: ‘Rather than questioning [...]
Ian Paisley: an appreciation
The most successful far right politician ever to operate within the wider British political system is finally taking retirement. Ian Richard Kyle Paisley – the one-time manic street preacher who is stepping down from the job first minister of Northern Ireland – built a substantial following among the protestant working and lower middle classes of [...]
Lee Jasper: a case to answer
It’s easy enough – pleasurable, even – for the left to criticise cases of corruption, chicanery, bungs, backhanders and general no goodery that emanate from New Labour or the Tories; it’s rather harder to speak out when apparent impropriety is closer to home. The natural tendency is to close ranks, to prevaricate, make excuses, advance [...]
24-hour drinking: don’t listen to the moralisers
Time was when pubs and clubs were legally limited to serving booze only during hours originally introduced to stop world war one munitions workers getting too wasted to turn out shells the next day. But in truth, you could – well, in London, anyway – always buy what was colloquially referred to as ‘a livener’ [...]
The return of David Pitt-Watson
Labour will shortly appoint a new general secretary to replace the hapless Peter Watt, who quit last November after admitting he was in on the David Abrahams secret donations scam all along. Tribune reports that there is now a shortlist of three, and that the job is likely to go to a City boy by [...]
