Month: July 2013

All hail @GeneralBoles for the oustanding Mr Ed picture It is difficult to be anything less than delighted at Ed Miliband’s announcement on Monday that he will call a special conference next Spring to consider the findings of the Collins Review.With this move, he has simultaneously done several things: he has, critically, kept the political… Continue reading The gift horse

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 opt for a complex and convoluted explanation over a simpler, more obvious (and therefore more likely) one. During… Continue reading The “Blairite conspiracy” narrative has not disappeared: it has just taken a breather

The following piece was published on Wednesday at Labour Uncut, following surely the most important event of Ed Miliband’s leadership to date, the proposal of radical changes to Labour’s relationship with unions. The last week or so has undoubtedly set the biggest challenge of Miliband’s leadership, in the aftermath of the Falkirk selection fiasco. It… Continue reading SPECIAL EDITION: Miliband’s moment of truth

Since my last piece on the matter, it is clear that the Falkirk selection fiasco has just blown up into what looks to be the biggest crisis of Miliband’s leadership to date, with no easy-to-predict solution on the cards.For the record, this does not make me feel good, it makes me feel angry and frustrated,… Continue reading We were not blind-sided. We were not

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 paper (although, full disclosure: I… Continue reading Why we should stop trying to stop Page Three