When Tony Blair’s government liberalised gambling, smartphones were still the stuff of science fiction. Sir Alan Budd, who wrote the 2001 review that the 2005 Gambling Act was based on, recently conceded in a House of Lords inquiry that “no …
The ghost of Blair haunts Sedgefield
To understand Blairism and its lessons for Keir Starmer, I go to Trimdon, a former pit village near Darlington where, on May 11, 1983, Tony Blair knocked on John Burton’s door. Burton was a teacher and the secretary of the …
Is Tony Blair Labour’s future?
Fifteen years after he stood down as Prime Minister, 25 after he was elected, Blair still deserves to be listened to. The three Labour leaders after him — Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband, and Jeremy Corbyn — defined themselves against Tony, …
What Starmer can learn from Corbyn
With Number 10 now housing the first sitting Prime Minister to break the law, and with living costs soaring across the country, Her Majesty’s Opposition should be making the political weather, and making plans to form the next government. That …
Britain needed the Falklands War
On the morning of Monday, 5 April 1982, the aircraft carrier Invincible slipped its moorings and eased into Portsmouth Harbour, bound for the South Atlantic. It was barely ten o’clock, yet the shoreline was packed with tens of thousands of …
Why the Left is split over Ukraine
Last week, Philip Bump of the Washington Post wrote a column about Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and referred, in passing and without elaboration, to “Right-wing pundit Glenn Greenwald”. The results were predictable. …
The cowardice of the far Left
The far Left exposed itself this week in a series of meetings and rallies and encounters about Ukraine, for a tyrant bombing civilians will get a fair hearing from them if he is not a member of Nato.
Putin needs …
Stop saying the UK is transphobic
When it gathered in Strasbourg on Tuesday to condemn “the extensive and often virulent attacks on the rights of LGBTI people”, the Council of Europe singled out a small collection of the most inhospitable countries. It contained the usual suspects …
