Prog Gold

Toughness

January 18th, 2012, No Comments

Chris Bertram is annoyed with Ed ‘N Ed:

In an attempt to demonstrate their credentials as the takers of “tough decisions”, British Labour leader Ed Miliband (whom I backed as leader) and his shadow Chancellor Ed Balls have been telling the world that a future Labour government can’t guarantee to reverse Tory public expenditure cuts, and [...]

Labour’s strategy: don’t oppose

May 31st, 2011, No Comments

Lenny riffs on Dan Hind’s observations on the need to break the ConDem coalition before the next election, and Labour’s role in this:

I would guess he rightly judges Labour’s position, which is that the last thing they want at this point is political power. The Blairites are convinced that they would have to implement the [...]

Empty gestures

January 26th, 2011, No Comments

Potlach dissects the politics of New Labour hand movements:

The thumb-press is a straight-forward mode of manual expression, in which the user makes a traditional fist, but then manoeuvres the thumb from its position clasped over (or under the fingers) and lays it gently on top of the index finger as a hint of [...]

Miliband: I have always been against war with Eurasia

May 26th, 2010, No Comments

Isn’t it amazing how solidly opposed all the Labour leadership candidates are against the War on Iraq now, seven years after it mattered? Mark Steel certainly thinks so:

David Miliband, the only one lucky enough to be an MP at the time, says he supported the war because of evidence of Saddam’s famous “weapons”, adding [...]

A progressive narrative on immigration is not needed

May 25th, 2010, No Comments

In the wake of the Labour leadership struggle, with various candidates grasping for immigration as the explenation for Labour’s defeat, Sunny aks for a progressive narrative on immigration:

here is the dilemma for the left. The public are not easily persuaded by facts. There’s no way of ‘educating them’. The right-wing media exists and it won’t [...]

Why Labour does not deserve support

May 17th, 2010, No Comments

High court judge forbids BA strike, based on Thatcher-era[1] laws designed to fuck up the unions:

The airline won on a technical point, arguing that Unite failed to carry out its statutory duties by making sure that everyone balloted was told the result.

When balloting for strikes, unions should give those who took part a detailed breakdown [...]

Why Labour? Why now?

May 17th, 2010, 1 Comment

Justin asks what has changed in Labour that you should rejoin it:

Can New Labour remodel itself as ‘progressive’ (whatever that means these days) even if it wanted to? This is what puzzled me about the people who crashed the New Labour website the other night in their stampede to rejoin the party. Nothing has changed [...]

QotD: the uselessness of Nick Robinson

May 11th, 2010, 2 Comments

D-Squared on the uselessness of Robinson and other supposed insiders in covering the coalition negotiations:

The fact that Labour and the LibDems were involved in negotiations all weekend seems to have come as a total surprise to political journalists. Shouldn’t this be the occasion for some serious carpetings by their editors? People like Nick Robinson, Adam [...]

This is Your Moment, BJaques

May 3rd, 2010, No Comments

Was rereading an archived post from 2008 this morning when I came across this comment from BJaques:
“…Think there will ever be a moment when masses of Labour voters will say “fuck it, I’m voting Lib Dem?””
Roll on Thursday.

Poll Fraud 2010 – Let The Vote Rigging Begin!

April 29th, 2010, No Comments

Never mind, Gordon, even when the election looks well and truly lost, there’s always voting fraud…
Is this story the reason why we’ve spent the last 24 hrs hearing smears about poor Gillian Duffy from the Labour-leaning media, rather than reports on Labour’s latest attempt to skew the popular vote?
Labour’s new media tsar Kerry McCarthy today [...]