Labour needs more fighters, and fewer quitters
Paul Richards
Friday, July 03, 2009
My top three political-speeches-gone-wrong are Howard Dean's ‘I have a
scream' in 2004, Kinnock's calamitous ‘We're alright' at the Sheffield
Rally in 1992, and Peter Mandelson's victory speech in 2001 where he
informed us he was a ‘fighter not a quitter.'
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Michael Jackson and the juvenilisation of politics
Rupa Huq
Friday, July 03, 2009
Am still shocked about Michael Jackson¹s passing. Went to bed after seeing Kirsty Wark interrupted in the middle of a Newsnight story on expenses (BBC executives this time) to receive news in her ear-piece that he'd been rushed to hospital. Awoke to hear he¹d snuffed it. People have compared it to Elvis dying or John Lennon¹s death.
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We only have a few weeks of active politics before the general election - we must start the campaign now
Paul Richards
Friday, June 26, 2009
In the Dog and Duck, outside school gates, across garden fences, the
talk is of little else. Britain nervously anticipates the publication
next week of the new ‘National Plan’. Queues will form outside
Waterstones, as the public eagerly awaits Labour’s proposals to take
Britain from recession to recovery, from doldrums to the high seas. Not
since the publication of Lord Denning’s report into the Profumo
scandal, which sold 4,000 copies in the first hour, has a government
document been so much in demand.
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Winning again?
Rachel Reeves
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
I will leave it to psephologists to find historical parallels for
Labour’s poll performance on June 4th, but with our share of the vote
down to 15% in the European elections, it’s clear that we’ll need to
look far back into the annals of history. With a year at most to turn
things around a plan to re-connect with voters and win again is needed.
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If the Tories returned to power one of Labour’s greatest achievements for working people could be at risk
Jamie Hanley
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
It was at the very end of the 19th century that one of Yorkshire’s
greatest social reformers, Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree, carried out his
survey, looking at the living conditions of 45,000 York residents.
Results of the survey, designed to test household income against a
poverty line, were published in his 1901 book, ‘Poverty, A Study of
Town Life’, and showed that almost 10% of York’s population were living
in primary poverty. The main cause of this poverty was that although
people were in work, ‘wages (were) insufficient to maintain a moderate
family in a state of physical efficiency’. Rowntree exposed the concept
of the ‘idle poor’ to be a myth – the poor were working, but inadequate
wages meant poverty.
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Obama’s path to greatness: socialism in one country?
Will Straw
Friday, June 19, 2009
For the last two years I have lived, studied, and worked in the United
States. I arrived in the country two years ago cynical about the state
of its politics. Although my columns for Progress got some of the minor
calls correct – like predicting that the extended Democratic primary
would help whoever faced John McCain, or that Sarah Palin was the dark horse candidate for Republican VP - I was wrong to think that Hillary Clinton could actually win the nomination after Super Tuesday or that John McCain would give Obama a run for his money in the general election. I got those predictions wrong because I
profoundly misunderstood a critical aspect of America’s collective DNA:
its ability to reinvent itself, realise its errors, and move on.
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