Xinjiang, Tibet: the case for self-determination
IT IS as much a 60 million member social class as it is a political party in the western sense, and whatever self-description it attaches to its ideology, the label ‘communist’ does not strike most observers as a particularly apt or well-deserved. Yet some kind of residual solidarity with the Communist Party of China somehow [...]
How socially representative are MPs?
IN THE bad old days of not that long ago, single trade unions controlled constituency parties in dozens of Labour strongholds. Secure the nomination from the NUM or the GMB, and you had a seat for life, son. Such practices were undemocratic, obviously conducive to machine politics, and invariably worked to the disadvantage of lefties. [...]
Capitalism for beginners (and Phillip Blond)
PHILLIP Blond has been hailed as David Cameron’s ‘new favourite intellectual’. I must admit it’s news to me that Cameron actually has favourite intellectuals; British politicians usually abjure that sort of thing as some unspeakable vice, generally associated with the French. Nevertheless, the Lancaster University theologian has secured considerable publicity for his book Red Tory, [...]
Why free Pinochet but not Biggs?
WE OBVIOUSLY do not know what yardstick Jack Straw uses when deciding whether or not prisoners should be released on medical grounds, but the contrast between his rulings in the cases of Augusto Pinochet and Ronnie Biggs is certainly instructive. Both of them, after all, flew to Britain from South America in search of hospital [...]
Al Maliki: the least worst option in Iraq
JUST before the invasion of Iraq, Paul Wolfowitz famously insisted that US soldiers would be welcomed in with ‘chocolates and flowers’. The prediction didn’t pan out. So it is ironic, then, that their withdrawal from the streets of the country’s major cities on Tuesday were indeed marked by flowers. Plastic flowers, to be precise. As [...]
