Month: January 2014

So, Labour has announced at the weekend that it will keep the 50p tax rate. *Sigh.*Even though Balls’ commitment to balancing the books is to be applauded (three years late, but better late than never) and although the economics is ok in terms of paying down the debt (if in fact it raises money, which some… Continue reading 50p and all that

I may have read this wrong, but I have an increasing sense of foreboding that the long-running “Euromaidan” occupation in Kyiv is not going to end well. Yes, Yanukovych has agreed to come to the negotiating table – he has even offered a prime ministerial job to one of the opposition leaders – but I… Continue reading Alarm bells in the Ukraine

 Picture courtesy the brilliant @GeneralBoles The opportunity for Labour to score party points against the Tories on the economy is clearly diminishing. While that is difficult rather than disastrous, our reaction is important. Last week, FT’s Janan Ganesh tweeted a characteristically shrewd observation: influenced by campaign groups, Labour seemed to have furthermore abdicated responsibility for… Continue reading Labour needs to stop fiddling and get on with the big stuff

With the world’s apparent disengagement from politics-as-usual,  it is tempting to think that traditional  politics is dying and there is something new happening. Broadly, there is, but it  may not be quite what we think. In 2011, a movement called Occupy was born. It was  a grassroots political movement –inspired by the  Spanish “Indignados” and the so-called “Arab… Continue reading Politics 2.0?

Vivien Leigh as Blanche Dubois in “A Streetcar Named Desire” Recently there seems to have been an odd acceptance by some right-wing commentators that Britain is to “sleepwalk to a Labour win”, as the Telegraph’s Matthew D’Ancona put it. It may be a genuine belief, rather than a way of giving Cameron a sly wake-up… Continue reading The kindness of strangers