Former UK Labour minister and leadership candidate Bryan Gould has a long-distance view of the Labour leadership contest from the other side of the world, living in New Zealand For New Zealand students of current affairs, the contest for the leadership of the UK Labour Party involves four names that will mean little – and, in […]
Too left wing? Corbyn concedes too much on public spending – trade deficit matters more
Aug 14th, 2015 by Bryan Gould.How Left wing is Jeremy Corbyn? If anything, argues Bryan Gould, Corbyn’s economic platform concedes too much on the government deficit – it is the balance of payments deficit which should be our main focus As the warnings about a Corbyn leadership become more and more hysterical, we need to ask – just how left-wing is Jeremy […]
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Are “realistic” Labour leaders best placed to win an election?
Jul 29th, 2015 by Bryan Gould.Conventional wisdom has it that the outcome of the Labour leadership contest most feared by the Tories would be the election of the candidate perceived to be nearest to the middle ground. Conversely, it is suggested that a candidate who espouses policies seen to be further to the left, (which seems to mean simply offering […]
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Who are the ideologues now?
Jul 27th, 2015 by Bryan Gould.It is a truism of today’s political analysis that, over the three or four decades since the onset of the so-called “free-market” revolution that swept across the western world, the centre of political gravity has moved substantially rightwards. Most of those of middle age or younger will have grown up, after all, in a world […]
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Labour must again be a moral crusade or it is nothing
Jul 22nd, 2015 by Bryan Gould.Nothing more starkly demonstrates the parlous state of the Labour Party than the failure of its leaders (and almost all of its would-be leaders) to resist cuts in benefits that will drive many thousands of the most vulnerable into deeper poverty and despair. No one prepared to look at the evidence can doubt that the […]
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Do the Germans realise the damage they have done to themselves and Europe?
Jul 19th, 2015 by Bryan Gould.The Wehrmacht had a crack at it – but that attempt ended in disastrous failure 70 years ago. The long-held dream of German hegemony throughout Europe is, however, back on the agenda and closer than ever to realisation. The Greek crisis threw up many sub-plots – many of them of great significance of course to […]
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Greece: not “reforms” but a triumph of ideology over common sense
Jul 13th, 2015 by Bryan Gould.As the Greek crisis unfolds, we are constantly informed by the world’s media that the European power-brokers will agree to a further bail-out only if Greece implements a programme of “reforms”. Most people will see this as confirming their understanding of what the crisis is about. The Greeks, it seems, have mismanaged their economy; so […]
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We need a Europe that’s for a better life, not one for advancing powerful interests
Jul 6th, 2015 by Bryan Gould.Like so many others, I long ago got used to being pilloried as “anti-European” for daring to say that the “Europe” we were urged to sign up to was no such thing, but was a particular arrangement cooked up by the powerful and foisted on the people of that often benighted continent without bothering either […]
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The Real Greek Crisis
Jul 2nd, 2015 by Bryan Gould.Most people will feel that they don’t need to look far for an explanation as to what lies behind the Greek crisis. Lazy reporting and racial stereotyping will persuade them that the Greeks – a feckless lot, no doubt – have spent more than they should, got into debt, taken out loans from the hard-working […]
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Why Martin Kettle’s one dimensional analysis does the Tories’ work for them
Jun 26th, 2015 by Bryan Gould.Martin Kettle, in today’s Guardian, joins the ranks of those no doubt well-intentioned observers whose advice to the Labour party, as it chooses a new leader, seems to be based on a curiously limited and one-dimensional view of the political landscape. In this view, there are only two possible directions of travel and therefore just […]
