Month: March 2015

Union money: “the cleanest in politics”, as some Labourites are fond of describing it, a little misty-eyed. To be fair, sometimes it is. There are decent unions who donate money because they actually want a Labour government. On the other hand, the cliché is that business donations always come with strings attached. Let’s decide which… Continue reading Horse-trading in Halifax

Last weekend, an interesting news item came up in the Sunday Times (£): the comeback as parliamentary candidate of one Karie Murphy, office manager for Tom Watson MP (and “friend”, or possibly former friend) to Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite, Britain’s largest union (see Centre Lefts passim). You may remember that Murphy was suspended from… Continue reading Falkirk, the sequel: Halifax

There is a rule in electoral pact-making, and pretty much any card game, which is fairly universal: don’t show your hand to the other players. That is, don’t rule anything in and don’t rule it out. You have nothing to gain (you can fritter away your negotiation leverage when agreeing the pact) and everything to… Continue reading Six reasons why Labour should rule out an SNP deal

Recently, it had seemed that the spate of idiotic “engagement” between some Labour MPs and far-right Muslim figures had happily died down.However, as if to prove me wrong, that there is no end to the imbecility of the pro-Palestine brigade, last week the Telegraph reported the launch of a “Muslim Manifesto” in Parliament by Yasmin Qureshi, Andy Slaughter… Continue reading The Muslim Manifesto and Labour’s useful idiots

As if to highlight the worsening of Russia’s already-disastrous political situation, last Friday night opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was found dead, after four shots in the back as he walked on a bridge in Moscow. Nemtsov was a decent man and, as a former deputy prime minister, one of Putin’s most high-profile remaining critics. Hilariously,… Continue reading Goodbye, Boris Nemtsov