Month: May 2015

To all of those readers who are not Labour obsessives, you may not already be aware of the state of the race, so here goes:There are four declared candidates for leader and I think unlikely to be any more at this point: Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, Liz Kendall and Mary Creagh.Burnham is the front-runner at… Continue reading Labour Leadership – the story so far

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein The Parliamentary Labour Party’s second-lowest postwar ebb (its 1983-1987 nadir was the only time it has been smaller) is not a time for us to adopt a “steady as she goes” philosophy. We’ve been there, after 2010.… Continue reading This party has to change

It’s been a mad ten days. Labour has not even had time to take in the scale of its crushing defeat (I will write about that next week), and everything has moved at breakneck speed. Two frontrunners (Chuka Umunna and Dan Jarvis) pull out of the suddenly-convened leadership race, and we are left with two leftish… Continue reading Yesterday may yet turn out to have been the day that everything changed

To take my mind off Labour’s crushing defeat in the general election this week – I will be writing about that shortly – I was reminded perhaps one of the most lasting impacts of the Miliband leadership, and surely his only direct influence on foreign policy as party leader.You will remember the Syria vote of 2013, when our… Continue reading Stopping the rush to war, pt 94

So, that Tony Blair. Bloody rubbish, he was. Good job we turned our back on him. #GE2015 — Rob Marchant (@rob_marchant) May 8, 2015

And so the election goes down to the wire. A shaky start for Labour; then two very good weeks; and now a late push by the Tories takes us to the photo finish. The Tories look better for winning the most seats; but Labour seems to have a better shot at forming a government. It… Continue reading Five dangers for Labour as the finish line approaches

So last night, what looked like being a footnote to the Lutfur Rahman story – a rally in defence of the troubled ex-mayor who now faces paying up to £1m in costs – took place in the long-suffering borough of Tower Hamlets. But it seems to have been something more than a footnote. Amazingly, it seems like defending the… Continue reading “Unite is proud to associate itself with Lutfur Rahman”