Unless and until Jeremy Corbyn initiates the secret bombing of Cambodia and orders a break-in to bug the phones at Progress HQ, I’m inclined to disregard any proffered comparisons between him and Richard Nixon. But that’s the level of hyperbole to which one unnamed MP stooped last week, following publication of a hitlist of ostensibly […]
Labour and antisemitism: let’s keep the problem in perspective
Mar 17th, 2016 by David Osland.Anybody else remember the New Statesman’s ‘Kosher conspiracy’ cover from 2002? Given that this influential British political weekly has recently waxed sanctimonious over a supposed surge in antisemitism in the Corbyn-led Labour Party, it’s worth recollecting that its own track record on this score isn’t completely spotless. The illustration – a Star of David piercing a […]
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Confessions of a Corbynista croissant muncher
Mar 4th, 2016 by David Osland.When a freshly-appointed Baron feels able to devote his maiden speech in the upper house to a condescending de haut en bas attack on commoners for being too damn posh, it’s entirely clear that Britain’s outdated honours system produces some rather rum results. But such was the lack of self-awareness on display when former Labour MP […]
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The metamorphosis of Andrew Gilligan
Feb 17th, 2016 by David Osland.Andrew Gilligan, it should not be forgotten, once saw better days. Thirteen years ago, the BBC reporter’s role in making clear that the Blair administration purposely sexed up the first of the two dossiers advanced in fraudulent justification for the invasion of Iraq should rightly have won him every journalistic prize going, not to mention […]
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Corbyn and the Israel/Islam/Putin/Trident critique
Jan 29th, 2016 by David Osland.An entire journalistic cottage industry now exists (such as here and here and here and here) devoted to making the claim that Jeremy Corbyn is an overgrown adolescent CNDer harbouring a lingering atavistic attachment to Russian nationalism, with participants frequently coming as close as libel laws permit to averring outright anti-semitism on the Labour leader’s part. […]
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Shock news: Jeremy Corbyn has a coherent strategy for the British left
Jan 12th, 2016 by David Osland.Turning Britain into an extended 1950s Czechoslovak collective farm tractor station forms no part whatsoever of the political project advocated by Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell. Yeah, I know, this shock revelation will sorely disappoint their detractors. But what is striking is that, ever since the two men took the leading positions in the Labour […]
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What’s love got to do with it? A brief rejoinder to Peter Hyman
Dec 24th, 2015 by David Osland.The Labour right and the Labour left never was one of the great romances. Ever since the couple plighted their troths on 15 February 1906, theirs has always been the very exemplar of loveless marriage. Little wonder that both partners have been guilty of flirtation – and sometimes adulterous couplings – at repeated intervals, for […]
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All I want for Christmas is a democratic socialist agenda, Jeremy
Dec 15th, 2015 by David Osland.So much for the clandestine mutterings that Corbyn would be gone by Christmas, then. By now it must be obvious to even the dimmest 4.5%er that they won’t be finding a new Labour leader in their stocking come 24 December. Do you really think it’s an accident that Corbyn has been photographed in a Santa […]
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Historical allusions: a helpful guide for Blairites and appeal for cooperation
Nov 30th, 2015 by David Osland.Gordon Bennett, those Blairites (a historical term for people roughly corresponding with the 4.5%ers – Ed) can’t half be a bunch of drama queens sometimes. The merest slight to the amour propre of the tattered remnants of New Labourism often meets with hyperbolic allusion to some of the most dramatic events of recent centuries by way […]
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Time for the Labour Left to debate reselection of MPs
Nov 28th, 2015 by David Osland.For the past three months, the very word ‘reselection’ has been unmentionable in Labour left circles, for fear that even talking about it would represent an unwarranted provocation of the Labour right. But as the events of the last 48 hours clearly underline, it’s time to break the taboo. At the very least, Corbyn supporters now […]
