It was like the crashing of dominoes, except the toppling was done by livelihoods, supply chains, ways of life. First, SSI in Redcar announced it was going belly up. And after toing and froing with the government, once it was clear state aid wasn’t forthcoming it was as if Britain’s steel bosses huddled together and […]
Posts under ‘Conservatives’
On Tory indifference to steel and to human tragedy, and their hatred of solidarity
Oct 25th, 2015 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.
An Osborne Supremacy?
Oct 21st, 2015 by James Elliott.“The best things are when you get your opponents to end up agreeing with you because then you’ve really won the argument. When you finally agree – that’s when it’s going to last, that’s when you’ve won’.” It is statements such as that which have earned George Osborne so many plaudits in the press recently, […]
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Labour must start to claw back the national narrative on austerity
Oct 21st, 2015 by Amy Dunne.This week has marked the beginning of the slow process of exposing the Conservatives as they are, and it’s certainly not as the party of the working people they so ardently claim to be. During Question Time, a small business owner named Michelle almost burst into tears as she made a heartfelt plea to Conservative Minister Amber Rudd not to […]
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Why did Lord Warner take so long to leave? Because the Tories need a distraction?
Oct 20th, 2015 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.Baron Norman Warner. Who he? I can’t be the only politico who scratched their head as news came through that Lord Warner resigned the Labour whip in the Lords this evening. So here are some very quick notes about a resignation few are likely to notice. Lord Warner was ennobled under His Royal Blairness in […]
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How Cameron is lining up Osborne as his successor
Oct 12th, 2015 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.As I’ve argued previously, the tradition these days is to read the chancellor’s and leader’s speeches as two parts of a piece. The former sets out the economic fiddlys and route to boom-time Britain, and the latter does the feels: the vision, the philosophy, the kind of society government is set on bringing into being. […]
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Bank regulation 8 years on, why has next to nothing been done?
Oct 8th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.The real root problem with regulating the banks is that the politicians are hand in glove with them. The Tories don’t even want to regulate the finance sector so long as it provides them with half their annual income year after year, not just the banks themselves, but the hedge fund billionaires as well. Worse […]
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Cameron talks New Labour, but acts old Tory class warrior
Oct 8th, 2015 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.Some journalists are incredibly gullible. On the basis of his rhetoric, Dan Hodges tweeted “Could someone on the Left tell me which part of David Cameron’s speech I’m meant to disagree with.” How about Dave’s outright porkie concerning Jeremy Corbyn’s comments on the assassination of Osama Bin Laden? Seeing as Dan’s less a journo and more […]
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Scrounging off the state? When Ian Duncan Smith put his wife on the parliamentary payroll
Oct 7th, 2015 by James Elliott.There is an unsavoury episode in the parliamentary history of Ian Duncan Smith that he will be hoping people will have forgotten. This concerns Dr Vanessa Gearson, who IDS appointed as his Chief of Staff for part of his time as Tory Leader (prior to this Dr Gearson worked as Private Secretary to the Chair […]
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Tory candidate Zac Goldsmith should be made to answer tax avoidance allegations
Oct 5th, 2015 by James Elliott.On Friday came the least surprising political announcement at the end of a summer full of surprises: That Zac Goldsmith, MP for Richmond Park and North Kingston, would be the Tories’ mayoral candidate in 2016. Goldsmith won 70% of the 9,227 votes cast in the primary, more than the other three candidates (Syed Kamall, Stephen Greenhalgh and Andrew Boff) […]
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Osborne stirs up more shit in which to bury himself in
Oct 5th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.Quietly and surreptitiously Osborne is marking out his pitch for the leadership. The trouble is, it’s thoroughly bad pitch. By denigrating opponents of privatisation he has set his face against the 70% of the population who earnestly want rail re-nationalised, a proportion so large that it must include nearly half who’re Tories. Osborne must assume […]
