BA cabin crew: not Scargillites of the skies
SOMETHING intuitively doesn’t quite stack up about Willie Walsh’s efforts to brand British Airways cabin crew unreconstructed throwbacks to the glory years of class struggle. Everybody knows the real industrial militants of the period were hairy-arsed engineering workers in blue overalls, ready to down tools and converge on Saltley Gate at the drop of a [...]
The left and the Labour leadership contest
I’D JUST like to take this opportunity to rule myself out of the impending Labour leadership race. Let me stress that the stream of emails and texts from readers, urging me to stand, will not cause me to change my mind. Given that Jack Straw, Alan Johnson, Peter Hain, Alistair Darling and Yvette Cooper have [...]
The class politics of the Thailand crisis
MY FIRSTHAND knowledge of Thailand is limited to the transit lounge at Bangkok airport, and my academic studies in international relations have hardly touched southeast Asia. So while I have been watching the developing political crisis now being fought out on the streets of the Thai capital, I have deliberately not written about a topic on which I [...]
Johanna Kaschke: the strange case of the Tory ‘suspected of links to leftwing extremists’
TOWER Hamlets Tory activist Johanna Kaschke really is one cherry short of a Schwarzwälderkirschtorte. [CONTENT TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED PENDING THREAT OF LEGAL ACTION] Because the judgment attracts absolute privilege, I can also quote Eady’s finding that in the 1970s Ms Kaschke ‘played a minor role in organising a benefit concert in aid of “Red Help”, which provided [...]
The betrayal of absolute anti-Toryism
IN DEMOCRATIC theory, people are supposed to vote for whatever it is that they happen to be for. But many who can remember how the Nasty Party got its nickname vote against what they are against. Welcome to the world of the absolute anti-Tories. When it comes down to it, we don’t give a flyer what [...]
Floreat Etona: the return of Tory government
AS THOSE who have seen or heard a news bulletin tonight will know by now, Gordon Brown has resigned as prime minister, opening the way for a Tory-Lib Dem coalition or perhaps a Conservative minority government. Neither outcome is a happy prospect for the left. I’ll offer a considered response tomorrow. But given the obvious [...]
Schwarzwälderkirschtorte: the verdict
MR JUSTICE Eady will hand down his verdict in the libel action brought against me by Tower Hamlets Tory activist Johanna Kaschke on Thursday morning. As is standard practice, both parties have had advance notice of the decision. Unfortunately, my solicitors – Robert ‘Legal King’ Dougans and David Allen Green – have threatened to shoot me if [...]
David Cameron: a question of class
I DID know that Cameron came from what is euphemistically called ‘a privileged background’, of course. But not until now did I fully appreciate just how remarkably favoured this man’s upbringing truly was. The opening chapters of ‘Cameron: the Rise of the New Conservative’ – a highly readable biography penned by Francis Elliott and James [...]
After the defeat: what now for Labour?
THAT the sheer resilience of working class support for the Labour remains a central principle of British politics is one of the few certainties in what, even four days later, is still a deeply uncertain bigger picture. Last Thursday the core vote looked the posh boys in the eye, decided it didn’t like what it saw, [...]
The far left and the general election
ENGELS famously compared election results to a thermometer capable of registering the political temperature among the working class. If yesterday’s outcome is anything to go by, it is distinctly nippy for the time of year. The next few days will doubtless see the Marxist left advance the same excuses for its poor performance that it [...]
