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Well, it had to come. Over the last year or two, the far left has shown its tolerance of sexism of the most unpleasant variety, thanks to the treatment of rape allegations about “Comrade Delta” in the SWP, among other things. Similarly the…
We can – and should – criticise Israel’s government for its policy on settlements. We can criticise it for some of its policies towards, and sometimes its statements about, Palestinians. And as with any disputed territory, we can and should…
In “Voodoo Histories”, David Aaronovitch’s superb book on the tendency of our age towards conspiracy theories, he asserts that “conspiracy theorists fail to apply the principle of Occam’s razor to their arguments”. In other words, that they…
A few days ago a piece on LabourList asked us to support a campaign to end Page Three of the Sun. I must admit, I’d be happy to see the back of the paper, let alone the page. A bit of background: since the 1980s, I haven’t bought a Murdoch…
The Independent’s poll of polls announced last week showed two things: the first is that Labour’s poll lead is slipping (to five points, its lowest level in a year, a year which has been abysmal for the Tories). This is exactly what we…
The original, modest protest over the redevelopment of Istanbul's Gezi Park has – largely due to a foolishly heavy-handed police response – mushroomed into a much wider manifestation of discontent. This discontent is not just economic and…
Last Saturday a senior European politician wrote an article in the British press which made you want to shout at the computer screen. Not such an unusual event, you might think, but this was not a debater's disagreement as one might have…
Today is the thirtieth anniversary of what was arguably Labour’s postwar nadir: the 1983 election. If George Orwell had, by chance, chosen the title of his future-shock novel as one year earlier than that he finally settled on, the irony…
Last weekend an Independent exclusive reported that Labour had made an in-principle decision not to stick to Tory spending limits post-2015. It quoted the Fabian General Secretary, Andrew Harrop, who had suggested an alternative strategy…
It is a measure of the sometimes spectacular insularity of British politics that the world can be at the brink of nuclear war, and the Westminster bubble carries on pretty much as if nothing has happened. With the death yesterday of…
Sometimes politics and the outside world display a beautiful, if apparently pointless, synchronicity. As if trying to tell us something, David Bowie goes straight to number one in the album chart by revisiting a profound source of…
“Send in the clowns” ran the Economist’s front page last week, in a biting but wholly apt comment on the disastrous election results in Italy, which looks likely to stop its progress towards vital economic reforms in its tracks. Italy's…
