Month: April 2014

Godwin’s Law of internet debating states that “as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1”. I mean, how ridiculous is that, that people always ending up making Hitler comparisons? Take Putin’s Russia, for example, you’ve got: 1.    A vain leader, whose foibles foreigners find laughable and/or repulsive but,… Continue reading Eleven ways in which we can all be happy that modern Russia is absolutely nothing like 1930s Germany

Britain, like much of the West, is clearly living through a period of reluctance, even quasi-isolationism, with regard to foreign conflicts. Interventionism may not be dead, but it is most certainly having a nap. A perception that fingers were burned in Iraq and Afghanistan pervades almost all foreign policy thinking, to a greater or lesser… Continue reading Ukraine: at some point, Labour will need more than warm words

It seems only a week ago, because it was, that I was writing about the Guardian’s strange proclivity for printing pieces by some of the world’s most unpleasant people – most recently Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov – when I should happen upon this new op-ed at that very same website. Now, for many, the printing of an op-ed… Continue reading The Guardian reaches a new low (iv)

My latest piece for the Independent, on the madness of applying the same principles which are ruining our parliamentary selection process to the UK labour market, is here.

An occasional series, where the Centre Left takes a look at questionable things posted at the Guardian’s website, Comment is Free. As we wrote a few weeks back, Vladimir Putin has no intention of stopping at invading merely Crimea. On Sunday, a near-identical manoeuvre was carried out on three cities in eastern Ukraine, taking government… Continue reading The Guardian reaches a new low (iii)

Last week, Panorama ran a programme on the elected mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman who, as it happens, is up for re-election in approximately one month’s time. It would be remiss of me not to mark this event. Full disclosure: as regular readers will know, I have my own reasons to be a little… Continue reading Why Lutfur Rahman must go – an alternative argument

Ah, the panic. You can see it setting in as there is a blip downwards in the polls. Two consecutive polls show Labour and the Tories neck and neck, and we have a letter to the Guardian. As Uncut’s Atul Hatwal noted last week, there are now rumblings on the Labour right. But while it… Continue reading Why the surprise? Labour’s poll slippage was predicted and is on trend