Turn Left To Power is an explosive dissertation in book form offering a fundamental redirection for Labour’s return to power, with bold ideas for a new economic and social settlement, including economic and taxation reform, restoration of responsibility in government and a renewal of democracy. Full of detailed information, hard facts and the results of thorough research and […]
We will have to wait until we can analyse his acceptance speech later in the week, but Trump has confounded every pundit everywhere to come through to the final winning line for the Republican nomination. Everyone said he couldn’t, he shouldn’t, he wouldn’t, but he did. The same pundits are saying that he cannot make […]
I am going to keep the rhetoric short. The political chaos within the government is over and real politics has begun again. Yesterday we had a symbolic debate about Trident, symbolic because parliament had voted already to proceed. It was good party politics and exposed Labour’s divisions. But now the business of Brexit, the economy, international […]
It will offend left wing readers of this blog who have not read Turn Left For Power, in which the whole issue of deterrence is comprehensively argued and examined, to learn that were I an MP today I would vote to renew. To hold a principled view that nuclear weapons are wicked and unacceptable is a posture to […]
It is too early to judge with accuracy exactly what is going on in Turkey. We know the coup has failed. We do not know exactly who was behind it. The Erdogan government seems to know almost too much, stoking wilder theories that it was in fact behind the whole thing. Whatever the truth and there […]
There are many people inside and outside Turkey who worry about the drift away from the secular state, which grew out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, and which is now threatened by the Islamist leanings of the current Turkish government. However Turkey is a democracy, has chosen its government in fair elections and to attempt to […]
It is difficult the grasp the scale of the horror in Nice. Nearly ninety dead, many of them children from a lorry driven at the celebrating crowd for two kilometers. It is impossible to imagine the fear, the suffering and the loss of life, let alone the shattered lives of the bereaved. The Prime Minister was right […]
This is a completely new government. And it is being put together with forensic precision and an eye for competence. One by one the hot air balloons and meddlers are returning to the back benches. This is good news for the country, which desperately needs a government of authority and mission. A mission a good […]
Mrs. May is tough and determined. Time will tell if she is right or wrong. That is what politics is about. What we do know thus far is that her reputation for caution appears to be overstated. The summary firing of Osborne and the appointment of Boris as Foreign Secretary are hardly the work of […]
I have just heard the most left of centre speech of any incoming Tory Prime Minister since Harold Macmillan. The make up of the Cabinet will tell us whether there is substance behind the words. I strongly suspect there is. This will indeed be an administration with a difference.