Even the original timetable for Brexit was ridiculously tight – out by the end of March 2019, and then the future relationship to be concluded 21 months later, by the end of December 2020. Remember that trade negotiations with third countries generally take more than 5 years, sometimes as much […]
Back in December I wrote that trying to break UK party politics was not the way out of Britain’s Brexit conundrum. The events of this past 7 days underline this even more. Back in December, 117 Tory MPs voted to No Confidence May as Tory leader. 118 voted against her […]
Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn might be atypical leaders of their respective parties, but in one way they are as traditional as they come: the extent to which they are partisan. Tribal. Defenders of their own parties above pretty much anything else. May emphasised her commitment to the party when […]
Channel 4 interviewed Jeremy Corbyn about Brexit. Apparently they were only allowed to ask him one question, so they asked the same question six times. “Do you honestly believe that Britain is better off outside of the EU?” He cannot answer. Have a watch. "Do you honestly believe that Britain […]
“Corbyn sacks three frontbenchers after Single Market vote” was the top story on The Guardian’s website early this morning. The three in question – Slaughter, West and Cadbury – were sacked, while a fourth, Daniel Zeichner, resigned. Like anything to do with Brexit there has been a lot more heat […]
One of the most unusual post-EU Referendum stories to date has been the news that UK slaughterhouses face a possible shortage of workers. As the BVA outlines, in the meat hygiene sector some 95% of veterinary surgeons graduated overseas. Britain, it seems, does not train enough of its own veterinary staff […]
Jeremy Corbyn’s latest Labour reshuffle has – rather predictably – prompted a storm of critique about the people the leader appointed, and the means he chose to appoint them. Yet this particular cloud has a potential silver lining: the choice of Keir Starmer as Shadow Secretary of State for Exiting […]
A friend on Facebook pointed me towards an article in GQ about the Wythenshawe & Sale East byelection. I’m not a regular GQ reader, but the headline – Running On Anger: on the campaign trail with UKIP – and the content of the piece are worth reading. The tactics employed by […]
I have not been developing websites for politicians for a while now, preferring instead to do consultancy and training work for a variety of different political and governmental actors. The problem was essentially that you can bring a politician to the social web, but you cannot make them drink, and […]
I’m an intensely political person and it has been that way for a long time. I joined the Labour Party in the UK as a 16 year old, before I was even old enough to vote. This means I have spent more than half my life in the Labour Party, […]
I was at an event in Brussels this week where there was much discussion about Labour trying to find 5 points it could put on a pledge card during the 2014 European Parliament election campaign. So, looking at what top politicians in the Labour Party have been saying about the […]
It has been an interesting week. My posts about Labour’s MEP selections, and the panel member in the East Midlands, Nicki Brooks, who seems to have selected herself, have prompted all sorts of debate, comments, and e-mails sent to me. My blog even already ranks 6th in Google UK if […]