Month: April 2017

Thinking about the ugly fate which might genuinely soon befall Europe, should Marine Le Pen win the French presidency – lately made more possible by the recent surge for Jean-Luc Melenchon, raising the spectre of a far-left/far-right runoff from next week’s vote – I set to thinking about what makes the current renaissance of populism/nationalism… Continue reading Nationalism: that meme that preys on every country’s weakness

“Can’t get the stink off/He’s been hanging round for days”, wrote Thom Yorke in 1993. “You do it to yourself, you do/And that’s what really hurts”. Lines that could have been written for Labour’s troubled, Stockholm-syndrome relationship with one man. A man who is still hanging round a party which somehow cannot seem to shake… Continue reading Labour and anti-Semitism: can’t get the stink off

It’s been over a decade since my last trip to the States. I used to go at least once a year or so but…young kids, you don’t do long-haul very often (and the experience of 26 hours to Australia with a one year-old in a cot vomiting, well, I was a bit more sensible after… Continue reading The Centre Left goes to…Dallas