See me in court
A STRIKE-OUT action designed to kill off the libel case brought against me by Tower Hamlets Tory activist Johanna ‘Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte’ Kaschke will be heard at the Royal Courts of Justice on Friday 23rd April, probably before Mr Justice Eady. If any of you are available on the day, I would appreciate it if you [...]
General election: the contradictions of the Liberal Democrats
THE Liberal Democrats’ basic marketing pitch, at least to the politically unsophisticated, is that they are not the Labour Party and they are not the Conservatives. Unfortunately for them, the only way they can hope to take part in the next government is in coalition with one or the other of the formations that they [...]
General election: where the public mood is heading
IF HIS photo by-line is anything to go by, Kamal Ahmed’s personal memories of the 40 years ago will be dominated by Lego and Bagpuss rather than the three-day week or the Winter of Discontent. So when the Sunday Telegraph business editor asks ‘Is Britain heading back to the toxic mix of politics and business [...]
TV debate: no basis to pick a government
FIVE o’clock shadow cost Richard Nixon the 1960 presidential election, or so political folklore has it. Never mind the substantive differences with Kennedy over the missile gap or supply-side economics; the GOP blew it because their man performed badly in a televised debate. It is on the back of such mythology that tonight’s general election [...]
Posh: the class politics of the Cameron clique
A BIBULOUS evening in a pub in rural Oxfordshire comes to a close with an upper class student clique almost killing the landlord, and then sexually assaulting his daughter. Luckily enough, a senior Tory peer who was himself a former member stage manages the necessary cover-up, reassuring the protagonists that their prospects of a political [...]
General election: why is it even close?
OF COURSE Labour is going to lose the impending general election. The only interesting question is why the party of which I am a member is not going down to a defeat of anywhere near the proportions it richly deserves. I’ve just dusted off a reference book that tells me that the first opinion poll [...]
Kyrgyzstan: colour revolution and permanent revolution
REVOLUTIONS that don’t comply with standard Marxist textbook definitions tend to confuse the revolutionary left. That probably explains why so many socialists have difficulty conceptualising the revolts repeatedly seen in the former Soviet Union, the Balkans and the Middle East since the turn of the century. To make matters worse, nostalgia for the days of [...]
Labour and business: the end of the affair
BRITAIN’S chief executives have ditched New Labour with fewer second thoughts than most of them displayed when divorcing their first wives. And this time round, they don’t even have to give the bitch the house. Some 68 top bosses – many from firms that have willingly sat on Labour quangos or even donated dosh to [...]
Cameron’s ‘big society’: not cohesive conservatism
CONTEMPORARY British politicians rarely adhere to any cohesive set of ideas, yet for some reason feel compelled to pretend that they do. And if their ostensible philosophy can be condensed into a two-word soundbite for the benefit of headline writers, so much the better. Remember Blair’s ‘stakeholder society’ stance, circa 1995? The concept did not [...]
The left and the general election
THERE is an important sense in which no party will win the general election which will be held next month. Whether Labour or the Conservatives emerge with the most seats, they will do so with positive endorsement from only around half the number of voters who withhold their support from all that seek it. On [...]
