Unless we are all prepared to do something about it, history may be set to repeat itself, but this time with far more devastating consequences. Foreign Secretary, William Hague and the Prime Minister, David Cameron are pushing for early missile and air strikes against the Assad regime in Syria. Well informed reports point to a […]
Whose policy is it anyway?
Aug 23rd, 2013 by Mark Seddon.It has been with a certain detached sense of irony that I have listened to a succession of senior Labour figures – John Prescott, Jack Straw, Alistair Darling and David Blunkett – criticising the strange Labour summer offensive that wasn’t. It is not that they don’t have a point, more that they might have delivered […]
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Could the German economic model be Ed Miliband’s ‘big idea’?
Aug 15th, 2013 by Mark Seddon.David Cameron was recently filmed lecturing a group of manufacturing workers with the inimical advice that ‘frankly we have to be more Germanic in our work practices’. That was pretty rich coming from an old Etonian who, like George Osborne, has never had a proper job in his life. But it set me thinking – […]
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It’s time to really mend the Labour trade union relationship
Jul 26th, 2013 by Mark Seddon.News that the police have dropped their inquiry into the Falkirk selection because of a lack of evidence does not come as a surprise to me. Having spoken at length to people who had read the Labour Party’s internal investigation and to a number of those directly involved in the selection, it became pretty clear that this […]
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Yes to a union voice, no to state funding
Jul 19th, 2013 by Mark Seddon.July has been a hot month. It has been especially hot in the hothouse world of Westminster politics, where lobby hacks mix with media savvy politicians, stories and plots are hatched and exposed. In the immediate aftermath of Ed Miliband’s shock announcement that in future he wanted Labour’s affiliated members to ‘opt in’ to party […]
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Ken Clarke, Gordon Brown – and why the Eds shouldn’t back Tory spending plans
Jun 26th, 2013 by Mark Seddon.Shortly after Labour’s landslide victory in 1997, for some perverse reason I invited Ken Clarke to attend one of our monthly Tribune dinners in the Gay Hussar restaurant, that old canteen of the Labour Left, in London’s Soho. Clarke professed himself baffled by the assembled journos, cartoonists, MPs and trades unionists asking if we spent […]
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The Barclay brothers’ cuckoo in Labour’s nest
Apr 23rd, 2013 by Mark Seddon.Walking in the Northamptonshire woods over the weekend, I heard that harbinger of spring, the cuckoo, calling for the first time. It is an unmistakeable sound to be sure, but one that very quickly becomes quite repetitive. There are other traits associated with cuckoos that don’t exactly endear them to many, most notably the propensity […]
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Boundary changes for devo max: the Tory-SNP deal that may reshape the UK
Nov 28th, 2012 by Mark Seddon.For all of the miscalculations and cock-ups of the past two-and-a-half years, the Tory party, and David Cameron in particular, are as strategically focused as ever on winning power and holding on to it. Few will be surprised to learn, then, that Cameron is still determined to force through parliamentary boundary changes next year that […]
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Iceland recovers but offers little hope to Greece
Feb 27th, 2012 by Mark Seddon.Iceland, a small, rocky outpost in the North Atlantic and home to just over 318,000 people is not a country that easily makes international headlines. But back in the 1970s, Iceland was a staple feature of the nightly news in the UK at least, as that country’s small navy did its best to repulse British […]
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Democracy crushed; elected President arrested; World wrings its hands
Feb 10th, 2012 by Mark Seddon.Bernard Savage, Head of the EU Delegation to Sri Lanka and the Maldives said: “At this stage, given our information, we would not say that there has been any legal infringement of constitutional forms. We are not taking sides but, as the High Representative Cathy Ashton has made clear, what we support is the constitutional […]
