Proportional representation : the paradox for the left
OF COURSE the left should favour proportional representation if Nick Clegg makes its introduction the price of a deal next week. And it should do so even if the real beneficiary will almost certainly be the hard right. The proposition that a party’s representation in a legislative assembly should be broadly in line with the [...]
Gillian Duffy: welcome to the core vote, Mr Brown
GILLIAN Duffy does not come across as one of life’s natural decaf skinny latte drinkers. Welcome to the core vote, Mr Brown. The nation could hardly help noticing your visible distaste at exposure to opinions at variance with your own. You certainly are not used to that sort of thing from the Parliamentary Labour Party [...]
In defence of cliterodectomophobia: the left, secularism and religion
OVER 90% of women in some African countries have undergone female genital mutilation, with religion the primary justification advanced by the perpetrators. Do you object to this? What are you, some sort of cliterodectomophobe or something? Beware, comrade. You are on the slippery slope to ritual child sacrificeophobia, that reductio ad absurdum of the arrogant [...]
Come back Gerry Healy, all is forgiven
WELCOME to Weimar Britain; the impending paralysis of the mainstream parties will throw politics back on the streets, to the benefit of either the far left or the far right. That’s the view of one of our foremost exponents of the dialectic, doubtlessly reached after exhaustive analysis of the contradiction between parliamentary and extra-parliamentary politics. [...]
Schwarzwälderkirschtorte update
I HAVE just about recovered from the stress of spending all day Friday in the High Court, where I am defending a libel action brought against me by Johanna Kaschke, a woman who has in the last three years gone from seeking nomination as a Labour parliamentary candidate to being an active Tory, pausing only [...]
Court 13: lucky for some?
As billed on the Royal Courts of Justice website, no less: IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION COURT 13 Before MR JUSTICE EADY Friday, 23rd April 2010 At half past 10 Jury List PRE TRIAL REVIEW & APPLICATION NOTICES TLJ/09/0316 Kaschke v Osler If anybody wants to come along to show support, [...]
Daily Mail and Nick Clegg: pot calls kettle Blackshirt
‘HURRAH for the Blackshirts’ is probably the most famous headline in Daily Mail history. But today’s ‘Clegg in Nazi Slur on Britain’ will one day surely rank right up there with its well-known predecessor. Let us not forget that the middle market tabloid was openly sympathetic to Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, and repeatedly [...]
So what are you hearing on the doorstep?
I HAVE spent the last two Sundays canvassing for John McDonnell in Hayes and Harlington, and will be devoting myself to the campaign full time from this weekend on. Sorry to disappoint Tory hopeful Scott Seaman-Digby, but my money is on a Labour hold, in a seat that was Conservative from 1983 to 1997. OK, it [...]
Benedict XVI arrest: Catholicism is above the law
HOT gospel preachers I heard as a boy growing up in a hardline Protestant denomination regularly used to speculate on whether or not the Pope was the Antichrist. I think the verdict was not proven, although the onus rested firmly on the Vatican to establish innocence. In fairness to Benedict XVI, branding him the Whore [...]
