Yesterday evening I was browsing Twitter, and saw this tweet about serious allegations of election fraud by UKIP from Labour politician John Mann (Bassetlaw) retweeted into my timeline. Oh, I’ll retweet that I thought (I’m on John’s side here, not UKIP’s), but Twitter prevented it – it turns out my […]
Tag: Labour
Two levels of compromise, and the current dysfunction of British party politics
I’ve lost track of the number of times people have defended the British First Past The Post (FPTP) electoral system with the argument that because the system generally produces a clear winner (a majority for one party), the system hence avoids the need for the complicated coalition negotiations and trade-offs necessary […]
How a Labour victory in 2015 makes the UK leaving the EU more likely
Two separate conversations in Brussels this week, both with Brits, but with people of very different political persuasions, led me to the odd conclusion summed up by the title of this blog entry – Britain leaving the EU is more likely if Labour wins the UK general election in 2015 […]
Another Labour MP has a go at the EU, and once more it’s disappointing
I suppose if you run Liberal Conspiracy you’re grateful for pieces from MPs and have to accept them. Today – via this tweet from Sunny Hundal – I read “We need to re-assess our approach to Europe” by Helen Goodman MP. This follows on from Douglas Alexander’s effort to re-assess […]
“The national interest” – the next term to reject in the EU framing fight
“It’s in Britain’s national interest to be in the EU” – it pains me how often we hear that phrase (or words that that effect) in speeches made by UK politicians about the EU. Yet we very seldom question its use. The need to start to question it, for me […]
LabourList | Better selection and election systems would give us better MEPs
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Some reflections on coalition building (in light of UK and Finnish experience)
Something has been nagging at me since the True Finns’ election success on Sunday. I think it’s because I am struggling to answer this question: why must True Finns be brought into a governing coalition? This question was brought into focus in a Twitter discussion with Mia Välimäki: [blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/mialeenasofia/status/60055951830556672″] […]
How elected representatives could use the web to add context (an example for Claude Moraes MEP)
I saw this tweet earlier from Brian Duggan who works for EPLP in their London office: [blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/TheBrianDuggan/status/55944123059941376″] I followed the link to the letters page of The Guardian, and this is what I get: Your report on the conviction of John Sweeney should be essential reading for some of […]
Miliband explains all the problems of the European left – now time for solutions
David Miliband set out his concerns about the predicament of the European left in a speech at LSE this evening. The full text of his speech is available at Labourlist here, and Next Left has a little post from earlier here. As you would expect from the elder Miliband, the […]
London’s multitude of events means I go nowhere
In Brussels it’s reasonably easy. There I was (and indeed still am) the EU politics blogger nerd. So if there are events and conferences to attend I go to ones about EU politics on the web first and foremost. Then I will go to ones about institutional reform or centre […]
Cruddas has a vision for Labour fit for 1990, not 2010
On October 19th Jon Cruddas delivered the Aneurin Bevan Memorial Lecture, entitled ‘Taking back the Big Society”. The text of the speech is available at Liberal Conspiracy here and if you’ve ever heard Jon Cruddas deliver a speech live you can almost imagine how he would have delivered it (I […]
Decontaminating the Labour brand
I was rather struck my Mark Thompson’s critique of the Labour Party’s current predicament – “I think Labour activists are in danger of underestimating just how damaged their own party brand already is” were the words he used. I really do not see it in those terms, and here are […]