Sea Change

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...

In a moment of immense unscripted irony, it was announced today that Derek Hatton - Deputy Leader of Liverpool City Council during the Trotskyist insurgency of the 1980s - has rejoined the Labour Party. As seven brave moderates stick their heads above the parapet and quit to form The Independent Group in Parliament, Corbyn reaches out to his old pals on the hard left. For those with long memories, 'Degsy' was associated with the very worst of the excesses in local government 35 years ago and was expelled by Neil Kinnock for his part in the organised infiltration of Labour by the Militant Tendency. Of course, in the world of the current Labour leadership, he's just a comrade who was hounded out in a 'witch-hunt'. Corbyn was one of the leading lights in the campaign to oppose the expulsions in the first place. Hatton's reinstatement proves the claim of the so-called 'Magnificent Seven' - led by Chuka Umunna and Luciana Berger -  that the Labour Party...

Was it Brexit that turned us collectively insane? Or was the EU referendum a sign that we had already lost our marbles? Whether the chicken laid the egg or the egg gave rise to the chicken, perhaps we’ll never know. In just two weeks, however, Parliament looks set to act in an utterly reckless and crazy way by voting down Theresa May’s proposed withdrawal agreement. After which, we’ll all be running around the farmyard without our heads and the country will be in the biggest clucking mess since World War II. But let’s get one thing straight early on. It’s not actually Theresa May’s deal at all. To describe it that way is entirely misleading. This is the deal that the EU is prepared to offer us. Sure, they might tinker with some of the detail at the margins. But we’re not going to get something fundamentally better than this. That’s because of the power relationships involved. Remember how the crackpot Brexiters promised us that the German car manufacturers would be strapping ...