Can Labour tame the Civil Service?

This general election could well break records: pollsters are predicting the lowest turnout in modern history. People feel politically homeless. That there’s no point in voting. That none of the politicians can change anything. In this respect, they have a …

Why all MPs are gamblers

“Are you two really the best we’ve got to be the next prime minister of our great country?”, asked Robert, during the final election leadership debate. As a Question Time audience intervention, it was a classic of the genre: knowing, …

Labour won’t save the NHS

Any culture, society or nation is ultimately judged on how it protects its citizens, and how it treats and cares for its most vulnerable. And on this standard, the Conservatives have failed. Over the past 14 years, their contempt has …

The very eccentric birth of Labour

In the freezing West Riding winter of January 1893, around 120 miscellaneous radicals and reformers met in Bradford’s Labour Institute — originally a Wesleyan chapel, later a Salvation Army barracks — to debate the creation of a new political body. …

The EU’s economic war on Le Pen

With France bracing itself for the first round of its snap parliamentary election this Sunday, the near-certain prospect of victory for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) has sent French and EU elites to their panic stations. Reeling from their …