Euroelections: 1994 and now
REMEMBER the factional disarray that beset Conservative governments in the early 1990s, as Labour supporters gleefully watched the Major administrations unravel before our very eyes? I can’t help being struck by the parallels between the political climate then and now. Except that this time round, Labour is the butt of the joke and it is [...]
Euroelections: far left results in UK
North East: No2EU – 8,066 (1.37%) SLP – 10,238 (1.74%) Total – 18,304 (3.11%) So the Scargillites – a party that exists only on paper – beat Crow, the CPB and the Millies, which collectively have at least a minimal activist base. Presumably this result is attributable to name recognition alone. But even so, the [...]
Euroelections: projections from France
According to French TV: UMP 28% PS 17% Greens 16% MODEM (Bayrou) 8.5% Front National 6.5% Front de Gauche (Parti Communiste Français) 6.3% Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (Bescancenot) 5% Libertas (de Villiers) 5% Lutte Ouvriere 1.3% That’s a bit of a let down for the NPA. Anybody know if 5% gets ‘em an MEP? Hat tip: [...]
Euroelections: far left breakthrough … outside Britain
SHEDLOADS of Trots and tankies will be getting a ticket to Strasbourg tonight. According to the Financial Times, the far left may pick up four and perhaps five of the 22 European parliament seats allocated to Portugal, with up to 20% of the vote: Nine recent polls give the Bloc Esquerda (BE), a party formed [...]
Euroelection predictions, anybody?
READERS of Dave’s Part tend to be a pretty opinionated bunch. So here’s your chance to demonstrate just how incisive your own particular brand of soberly perspicacious political analysis can be. Let’s be having your predictions ahead of the announcement of the euroelection results tomorrow night. Will the Labour Party get more or less than [...]
The class politics of Alan Johnson’s backstory
THERE is a new political cliché abroad. Large numbers of commentators are keen to point out that Alan Johnson – Britain’s new home secretary, and possibly its next prime minister – has got something called a ‘back story’. I’ve heard several Labour politicians – all obviously singing off the same cribsheet – use the expression [...]
Brown crisis: lessons from the Moscow coup
WHEN Stalinist hardliners from an utterly discredited ancien regime parked their tanks on Yeltsin’s lawn in August 1991, they were probably expecting a smooth transition. After all, most of the conspirators had been part of the apparatus for decades. Some – including figurehead Gennady Yanayev – were already fulltime politicos 26 years previously, when the [...]
Euroelections: the case for No2EU
Some time ago, I invited Stoke-based blogger PhilBC – who trades as A Very Public Sociologist, and who is a member of the Socialist Party – to provide a guest post making the case for the RMT-backed No2EU coalition in the euroelections. Little did I realise that the cheeky bugger would leave it to the [...]
Et tu, Rusbridger?
AT SOMETHING like 1,700 words, the Guardian’s editorial takes an awfully long time to get to a point it could have set out with considerably greater simplicity: sack Brown. Coming from what probably remains the newspaper of choice for most Labour activists, and on the day before a key electoral contest, the grotesque circumlocution and [...]
CWU: don’t leave Labour
WHEN Peter Mandelson starts quoting Margaret Thatcher soundbites at trade unionists, the implicit tactlessness is almost certainly perfectly deliberate. While New Labour plans to sell a 30% stake in Royal Mail to the private sector might fail anyway – simply because nobody is willing to stump up enough cash – the business secretary insists the [...]
