Outside In

So James Purnell has joined the list of Ministers and ex-Ministers ‘setting out a vision’ for what will soon become the post-Brown political landscape. In a remarkably frank article, Purnell offered a bold vision that, were it to gain serious traction, would undoubtedly prove divisive, particularly amongst the metropolitan left…

It’s a refrain commonly asserted that all politicians are the same, and you couldn’t slide a fag paper between the three main parties. I have sympathy with this view, whilst not wholly endorsing it, simply because on so many social, cultural and moral issues one sees a political uniformity that,…

I do feel for Mr Brown. Watching him grasp frantically as all he ever longed for slowly slips through his fingers can thaw even the iciest heart. At root, I’m sure Mr Brown is not all that bad, and were he to have inherited the job he so dearly covets…

When asked a couple of weeks back about Martin Amis’s comments that the sexual revolution has been a more difficult transition for women than men, Fay Weldon, that thinking feminist that keeps stepping out of line with the sisterhood for saying things that might actually be true, responded, ‘It wasn’t…

A blog post over on the Demos website by liberal-in-chief Richard Reeves caught my eye today, entitled ‘Ditch the Alpha Male’ (isn’t this a rather alpha-male way of putting it? I mean, where’s the please?). Anyway, in the article Mr Reeves persists with his attempts to level society into a…

So, just as Mr Balls attempts to give the impression that he has listened to the public outcry against his Vetting and Barring Scheme (aka the paedophile-presumption scheme), and adjusted criteria so that now only 9 million well-meaning individuals have to clear their names before they work with children, it…

The temptation must be excruciating, it really must. Imagine: you’re the leader of a political party that, historically at least, has been on the side of the workers, of the poorest in society, of the dispossessed and the downtrodden. And facing you, on the other side of the chamber, is…

Now that the temporary euphoria surrounding the ‘rogue-poll’ has ceded, Labour must have the courage to continue asking itself the uncomfortable questions;  why are people deserting us? And what can we do to get them back? Often, the response is that the party needs to reconnect with its core vote,…

The Labour Party is facing wipe-out. Politically, a defeat looms every bit as significant as that inflicted upon the Conservative Party in 1997. The potential damage, however, extends well beyond projected numbers of seats the Labour Party may come to hold post-election. More worryingly, Labour is losing the battle of…

There appears to be a hardening consensus behind the opinion that David Cameron, conscious of his electability in the key marginal seats that will decide the election, is seeking to present a Tory party sterilised of the toxicity that has plagued the Tory brand since the downfall of Thatcherism.  In…