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In 2017 Britain remains a deeply divided nation. Those divisions take many forms: class, income, gender, race and education. In England, in particular, there are substantial inequalities in educational attainment which are linked to social…
It would appear that Labour is giving very serious consideration to ensuring our nation's 16 and 17-year-olds are given a vote in time for the next general election. About time too! The voting age in Britain was last reduced close to 40…
So we’re off. The battle lines were set out in the last prime minister's questions before the election; the runners and riders are almost in place and in Labour circles expectations are - well to be honest they are modest. The truth is that…
Defeat in 2010 and again in 2015 should have provided a clear and unambiguous message to the Labour party: renew or prepare for yet another long period in the wilderness years. Sadly renewal has been replaced with squabbling and we have a…
As someone who served in the armed forces (RAF for 7 years) I personally believe that Labour should think again about its support for the renewal of Trident and that the scrapping of Trident could end up being a vote winner and not a vote…
How has the average Labour MP viewed the party’s members or supporters in the past? As foot soldiers or community ambassadors and leaders? As canvassers or communicators? In 2011 the US campaigner Arnie Graf was asked by Ed Miliband to…
If I were ever asked to suggest a strap line for the Department for Education (DfE) it would be: Ambition drives success. When launched in February 2004, Building Schools for the Future (BSF) was the largest and most ambitious scheme of its…
Should Labour win the next general election its new Education Secretary will inherit a school system that has been subject to significant ‘diversification’ and ‘structural reform’ since 2010. The key question for many Labour members and…
Several years ago Michael Sandel delivered his excellent Reith Lecture and looked at the relationship between morality and politics, more specifically the interaction between religiously inspired morality and politics. He argued, correctly…
The current whispering campaign against Stephen Twigg is not motivated by concerns about his performance, it is driven by ideology. Twigg is, as I predicted some weeks ago, coming under significant pressure from those in the parliamentary…
Stephen Twigg, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary is one of the more thoughtful and pragmatic individuals to hold this vitally important brief for some time. To his credit Stephen has been out and about these past two years listening to…
In May 2012 the ‘data geeks’ mining data for the Obama/Biden campaign noticed that women aged between 40 to 49 and living on the west coast were far more likely to donate to the campaign if offered the chance to dine in Hollywood with…
