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house to a condescending de haut en bas attack on commoners for being too damn posh, it’s entirely clear that Britain’s outdated honours system produces some rather rum results.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 […]
Posts Tagged ‘Class’
Whatever happened to the workers? Is Labour now a middle class party?
Jan 26th, 2016 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.The key to “professional” success in the land of comment is to never let the facts get in the way of a good narrative. If hard numbers and social realities are inconvenient, one can safely shove them aside in the assured knowledge they won’t come back to haunt the writer. Especially if one is a […]
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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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Gordon Brown and power
Aug 17th, 2015 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.Has Gordon Brown reached down from heaven and, like the vengeful Presbyterian God, smited Jeremy Corbyn with his great clunking fist? Well, no. The much-trailed Power with a Purpose speech wasn’t the knock out some were hoping for, as if a talk could derail the Jeremy juggernaut anyway. Instead we had a thoughtful, nuanced and […]
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A Lab-Lib Dem merger? A very, very bad idea
Jun 12th, 2015 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.One question that comes up time and again from punters on the doorstep to far left activists is “why can’t you all just unite?” (although, ironically, Left Unity has ruled out unity with the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition for next year’s London Assembly elections). Of course, there are Very Important Reasons why myriad groups in the revolutionary […]
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Immigration and benefits: the political economy of scapegoating
Jun 2nd, 2015 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.Immigration and benefits. Immigration and benefits. Immigration and benefits. I can barely remember a time when these weren’t commanding headlines or the imaginations of politicians. One might say that this is no surprise, seeing as they are both hot button issues for the public – though it might be said these issues are fabricated and […]
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Aspiration for all would be fine, but neither the Tories nor the Blairites will deliver it
May 14th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.The Tory manifesto was artfully targeted at making everyone a weeny bit richer, and some a lot richer. It offered to raise the income tax threshold to £12,500 (though the rich get more from that than the poor), to lower tax on those on the minimum wage, to raise the higher rate income tax threshold […]
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Why any Labour leader who can’t reach working class voters will lose again
May 14th, 2015 by Jon Trickett.This is a defining moment for the future, and arguably the survival, of the Labour Party. In the coming months there will be much debate about what went wrong and where next. In 2005, I produced evidence that Labour had lost 4 million voters since the election in 1997. A substantial part of these missing […]
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The big downside of this election
May 5th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.Apart from the narrowness in the polling between the two main parties, the other dramatic characteristic of this election is the number of people who are profoundly disgruntled and deep-down angry at the Establishment, in which they include Labour as well as the Tories, and are likely either not to vote at all or to […]
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Re-engaging with the alienated “untouchables”
Apr 20th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.The Labour campaign continues to make good progress whilst the Tories lurch from one failed artifice after another, and Ed Miliband is increasingly taking command with growing confidence. The election has nevertheless drawn attention to a disturbing penumbra of alienation from the whole process. In poor white working class areas the number of households who […]
