Next year’s general election is likely to centre on domestic issues rather than Russia and its invasion of Ukraine, not least as it is hard so far to see any substantive policy differences with the Conservatives on this issue, beyond a possibly performative demand that the government do more of
Richard Toye’s Age of Hope is the first major study of the post war Attlee government to be published since 1997. It stands alongside the two much earlier classic overviews of this period, Kenneth Morgan’s Labour in Power (1984)and Peter Hennessy’s Never Again (1992), but benefits from a longer and equally
Peter Kyle MP, the man who masterminded Labour’s breathtaking win in Mid-Beds, has called the result ‘a political earthquake’. But he’s wrong. It’s much bigger than that. An earthquake may shake the walls, knock over a few vases, and take down some buildings. The results from Mid-Bedfordshire and Tamworth are
Today is my final day as director of Progressive Britain and, coming just days after this year’s Labour Party Conference, it provides an opportunity to reflect. Our strapline since we rebranded in 2021 has been Imaginative Thinking to Rebuild Labour and the Nation. Its more that just a line though,
As the Tories implode into a farrago of populist nastiness and broken promises, with Liz Truss as their spirit guide, attention turns to whether Labour is ready to govern. Labour’s conference in Liverpool is the last one before the voters make up their minds about whether they trust us or
“The missing ingredient is hope,” commented The Observer’s Andrew Rawnsley recently while discussing Labour’s “recipe for power”. He may have a point. At least, there is a perception that hope is not front and centre in our recipe. Why is this and what do we do about it? No more
In a small corner of the Westminster bubble, certain figures on the Right of politics are waging a relentless campaign to ‘slash the tax burden’. Given the voracity of support from a Trussonomics aligned coterie, you could have been forgiven for thinking that there is a great swell of popular
The victory of the Labour Party at the next general election is by no means a ‘fait accompli’ but as it draws closer, and the party rides high in the polls, it is only rational to look ahead. Labour is currently grappling with how to be a progressive party in
There are cracks running through all our communities. Cracks symptomatic of over a decade of Tory rule. In my constituency of Broxtowe where I am standing at the next election, I see how public services are close to breaking. No case is more tragic, or underappreciated than that of school
Labour’s problems with immigration can be traced back to the early days of the European Union’s major expansion into its Eastern and Central neighbours in 2004, allowing in 8 new countries. In reaction, most EU member states triggered transitional controls to stop mostly young, skilled (and unskilled), workers exercising their
