Sea Change

I keep hearing Corbyn’s tenure referred to as an experiment. But how many experiments continue for four years, despite a toxic chemical haze billowing out of the mad inventor’s lab? The hard-left project should have been stopped in its tracks countless times.  As far back as 2015, Joe Haines – Harold Wilson’s Press Secretary – suggested that the Parliamentary Labour Party should make a unilateral declaration of independence. They could have appointed their own leader in Parliament and bypassed the socialist relic the members had chosen to elect. Instead, they prevaricated. They agonised. They muttered to each other in corridor recesses at Westminster. The frightened bunnies were at first bemused and disoriented, allowing Corbyn and his cabal to consolidate their position. And subsequently, they were frightened. Mainly frightened of the swollen membership of three-quid flotsam and jetsam who had invaded their constituencies pledging allegiance to the sage of the allotments

It may be that the folk in Extinction Rebellion don’t care if they win friends and influence people. Perhaps they believe that a small group of activists can disrupt society so much and for so long that everyone decides to acquiesce to their demands? The Suffragettes, for example, didn’t mess about. They chained themselves to railings, smashed windows and threw themselves in front of horses in a bid to win women the right to vote. If they’d played nicey-nicey, the male establishment might just have shrugged. But there’s one important difference between these two movements. Campaigners for women’s suffrage were addressing a specific and fundamental injustice that could potentially be corrected through legislation. By 1928, women had the same voting rights as men by law. There was a focused goal and after a generation of struggle, it was achieved. That very basic demand was a platform on which later feminists would build. Suffrage on its own, after all, doesn’t deliver equali

There’s only one desirable outcome to any general election at the end of 2019, but unfortunately it’s not something that any of us can vote for. We need another hung parliament. Preferably one that allows a little more room for mathematical manoeuvre and – critically - one in which both Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn have both suffered a severe setback. Never in modern history have both the major parties been simultaneously so unfit to govern.  Johnson has transformed the Conservative Party into radical right-wing movement, intent on delivering Brexit come what may and winning back the votes lost to Nigel Farage’s movement. Dominic Cummings serves as a Rasputin-like figure in the court of Tsar Boris, seemingly responsible for devious plotting and manipulation. But he is just one figure in a coterie of hardline advisers and ministers that the Prime Minister has gathered around him. The Tories break with constitutional norms and even threaten to defy the law. The

Corbyn out-riders Paul Mason and Owen Jones feel their moment has finally come. They yell through microphones of coming resistance and revolution, while eager crowds chant their agreement. Momentum activists discuss the need to block bridges and tweet about the firebombing of Lloyd George’s house over a hundred years ago by Suffragettes. Labour MPs such as Dawn Butler and Clive Lewis have tweeted their willingness to camp out in the Commons chamber to defy Boris Johnson’s prolonged closure of Parliament during the conference season. The hard left has suddenly, to the alarm of more moderate pro-EU activists, taken an interest in Brexit for the first time and decided to hijack the demonstrations and protests over the prorogation of Parliament. These extremists fantasise about general strikes and confrontations on the street, while most people in the UK are just desperately praying for the whole crisis to resolve itself. Let’s be honest though. There’s no doubt that thes

There is a madness to politics right now in North America, the UK and some parts of Western Europe. Trump ratchets up the racist rhetoric and hatred in the US. And it increasingly seems as if the lunatics haven’t just taken over one asylum, but are on the brink of securing tenure in multiple institutions and setting up a chain. Indeed, that’s the stated intention of far-right activists. Steve Bannon, for instance, has spent a great deal of time on his European operation and clearly hoped for a more decisive impact across the EU in the Parliamentary elections in May. Although things may not be moving at the speed some right-wingers hope for, the elevation of Boris Johnson next week – barring an extremely unexpected twist in the Tory leadership contest – sets the UK careering towards a no-deal Brexit and a lurch to the right. A new Westminster election may be on the cards and it will be the most unpredictable in modern history. Anything could potentially happen if half the

A recent retweet of mine managed to clock up 45,000 impressions and a fair bit of online commentary. I'd spotted and circulated a post from Laura Smith, the Member of Parliament for Crewe & Nantwich, who was telling us about a 'people-powered mass meeting' just held in her constituency. Embedded in Smith's tweet was an image of the gathering. Last night's people-powered mass meeting proved that we all share a common vision for our local community and for a fairer society. Lots of campaign ideas to rebuild Crewe & Nantwich #ByTheMany @IanLaveryMP pic.twitter.com/yaJ4ipwdm7 — Laura Smith MP (@LauraSmithMP) June 26, 2019 The picture showed maybe 60 or 70 people standing with their arms aloft and fists clenched, as if gripped by a revolutionary fervour. The filter on the shot gives it a slightly retro feel and one might easily be looking at a contingent of Republicans determined to defend Barcelona from the fascist onslaught in January 1939. But

There are two battles being fought in the Tory Party right now. The first is the obvious one, which is over the Conservatives’ stance on the UK’s exit from the EU. With Farage riding high in the polls, the dynamic is clearly towards the election of a hard Brexiter, who is prepared to countenance a no-deal departure. That’s why it’s hard to see anything other than a Boris premiership, despite the Old Etonian’s obvious unsuitability for the role. Other candidates – Dominic Raab and Esther McVey, for example – have vowed to be just as tough with Brussels. We then see a spectrum of opinion and rhetoric, which stretches all the way to the fairly sensible, if skeletal, figure of Rory Stewart, who is presumed to have little chance among the Tory faithful. The other battle, in many ways, is the more interesting one. It’s over the long-term future of British conservatism beyond Brexit. This debate is understandably somewhat lost amid the current sense of intrigue and crisis, b

There’s no doubt in my mind that the Remain campaign has economic sense, political reality and moral righteousness on its side. Sadly, this won’t stop it from losing its protracted battle to prevent the UK leaving the EU. In fact, I would go as far as to say that its tactical ineptness and catastrophic misreading of politics mean that it probably deserves to lose. Take the most recent hullabaloo over Boris Johnson and the perplexing decision by a district judge that he must appear in court over the claims he made during the referendum campaign. Even setting aside the legal rights and wrongs – it’s hard to imagine any precedent for ‘misconduct’ actually being extended to include campaign sloganising – the celebrations among Remainers are completely premature and misplaced. If I were a hard Brexiter, I would love the court case. It would confirm all my narrative about the political and legal system doing everything in its power to obstruct the ‘will of the people’. It is

We all grew up with the adage that we must careful what we wish for. Before we know it, we’ll find it’s actually happening. And here we are with the European Elections on 23 rd May. Secretly – and latterly not-so-secretly – Remainers longed for the idea of deferring the Brexit withdrawal date. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, they imagined, if May were unable to force us to quit the EU at the end of March and we would continue as full members of the club? Just think of the egg on the Prime Minister’s face as she was forced to concede that elections to the European Parliament would have to go ahead after all. Well, May will have egg on her face after 23 rd May. But so will everyone else, apart from Nigel Farage. Numerically, the anti-Brexit voters in the population are pretty strong, but who are they supposed to back? The revived ‘Bollocks to Brexit’ Liberal Democrats, perhaps? The newly-formed Change UK? Maybe they think the Greens are a good option? Or does nationalist l

There’s an impressive encampment of climate change protestors in the Marble Arch area of London. They’ve blocked the entrances to Oxford Street, Edgware Road and Park Lane, so are causing a fair amount of disruption to London traffic, as they intended. It would be churlish to point out that pollution levels are rising in surrounding streets. That’s temporary, where as the climate disaster is likely to be very permanent. As I walked among the dozens of tents this morning, where people had spent the night, I was reminded of my teenage years in the 1980s demonstrating against nuclear weapons. In the height of the Cold War, when Reagan and Thatcher faced off against the Soviet Union, they appeared to represent the ultimate existential threat. I remember camping out on Clapham Common in 1985 and using it as a base for demos and protests in a week of action. The Leader of Lambeth Council, ‘Red’ Ted Knight, paid us a visit. At the time, if you’d asked me why I spent more time

There really was no need for the government to reduce the threshold at which high blood pressure gets treated . Corbyn’s supporters are registering 160/100 right now, as their project starts its inexorable – and inevitable – downward spiral. Long gone are the days when the hard left used to dine out on Jez’s improbable 40% showing in the 2017 general election. The latest YouGov poll has the Tories on 40, while the remodelled Momentum-run Labour Party languishes on 31. Even the faithful are beginning to realise the game is up. If there ever were an opportunity for the veteran socialist to slip into Downing Street, the window has now closed. And as the decline continues, you can expect recrimination, denunciation and howling exasperation. How did the Corbynites find themselves in this position? Of course, there’s no one answer. Like many movements, they are divided between purists and pragmatists. Although Corbyn and McDonnell share much the same ideology, the former

Perhaps the Independent Group – or the party into which it will inevitably morph – will achieve little electorally. Critics are quick to point to the experience of the SDP in the 1980s and the crushing nature of the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system. But those who obsess over the chances of a breakthrough in a general election are missing the point entirely. The very emergence of TIG is the single best thing to happen to British politics in some years. The breakaway faction offers a potential choice to voters that goes beyond hard-left vision of Jeremy Corbyn and the laissez-faire madness championed by the Tories. It exposes the vacuous claim of the far left that ‘centrism’ is now dead and has no natural constituency. It shakes up the arithmetic in Parliament and presents some new possibilities in the endless and painful debate over Brexit. (Indeed, in recent days John McDonnell and others have signalled that Labour might be more inclined to embrace a second