Up to a point, Lord Lebedev
IS IT just me, or have recent decades witnessed a sharp drop in the average quality of national newspaper proprietors in this country? The great press barons of the early and mid twentieth century – out and out rightwingers, one and all – were important political players, as every standard history of the period testifies. [...]
Whatever happened to the heroes?
‘No more heroes anymore’ was one of the central punk slogans of 1977; I think I can even remember stencilling it on a T-shirt. Yet all of us inevitably have them, and over the Christmas and New Year period, I’m going to be running over my top ten. I will also offer a brief motivation [...]
Obama’s Marxist lies for power: real Americans speak out
I SUPPOSE I am what many Yanks would consider to be a typical smartarse British white boy European political sophisticate. In my case, the Three Degrees is not the name of Prince Charles’s favourite 1970s all-girl soul band, but a simple statement of educational attainment. It would be rather a cheap shot to glean a [...]
Israel/Palestine: some parameters for rational debate
In all the long years I have taken an interest in politics, I have never come across any debate remotely as characterised by wilful distortion, obfuscation, over-emotionalism, deliberate bad faith, polarisation, ill-tempered malicious mudslinging and widespread playing of the man rather than the ball than the Israel/Palestine issue. Sometimes it seems that enough straw men [...]
Azmal Hussain and the class basis of Respect
I’m perpetually mystified as to why a diminishing layer of naïve white leftie Respect supporters think that the project ever amounted to anything more than an attempt by the Socialist Workers’ Party to mobilise a mosque-directed communalist bloc vote behind a tankie Labourite MP, which has now all but come to grief. The party’s semi-official [...]
‘Rizla Rosie’ Boycott: Boris’s food champion
You know when you get the munchies, man, like you totally gotta eat? At that level, I suppose the appointment of the woman once nicknamed ‘Rizla Rosie’ as London’s ‘food champion’ makes a certain amount of intuitive sense. And given that Ms Boycott’s new gig at the Greater London Authority is unpaid, it would be [...]
Barry George: it’s not a crime to be the local nutter
It was an underworld execution. Or perhaps a jilted ex-boyfriend did it. Or maybe it was a random murder, conducted by a stranger unaware of the celebrity status of a prominent television presenter. Well, either one of those three options, or Arkan ordered the hit in revenge for Britain’s bombing of Radio Television Serbia. We [...]
Compass: social democracy redux
Social democracy was the dominant trend in the British labour movement throughout the 1950s and 1960s; indeed – oooh I love it when you talk all neo-Gramscian to me, baby – you could even call it the hegemonic ideology of the postwar period. But it was a case of now you see it, now you [...]
A plethora of plugs
(1) Tomorrow I will be one of the speakers at a Jewish Socialists’ Group meeting on Labour funding and the David Abrahams affair. The event runs from 3pm-5pm, and will be held at the Adelaide Pub, 143 Adelaide Road, London NW3. Tubes: Chalk Farm/Swiss Cottage. Buses C11 and 31 stop outside. Readers of this blog [...]
Political cover versions of 2007
Alright, pop pickers? Not ‘arf! It’s been a poptastic year for politicians doing rock, blues and jazz cover versions, and – as a special treat for fortysomething readers who used to listen to Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman, pictured left – Dave’s Part is proud to bring you this exclusive 2007 Top Ten: (1) [You're my] Brownite [...]
