Defending Our Future: The Blueprint For The Lib Dems To Modernise and Protect British DemocracyAs Reform continues to lead the polls, we are witnessing a movement that mirrors Trump's MAGA movement in the US, unlawfully arresting, detaining, and sometimes deporting non-white residents, including U.S. citizens and legal residents. What we're seeing from this administration is an attempt to ethnically cleanse the country of non-white people. With the clear ties between Farage and MAGA, Reform is not just any political rival. Their ascent to government would initiate a direct assault on British democratic values. It won't be long before non-white British residents and citizens are targeted in the same way. A Reform government is existentially ... (more) |
Is blocking Burnham a fatal mistake for Starmer?The Guardian reports that Labour's national executive committee (NEC) has blocked Andy Burnham's request to seek selection for the Gorton and Denton byelection, setting off an immediate and furious row within the party. The paper says that in a vote of the 10-strong "officers' group" of the NEC, only one person, Lucy Powell, the party deputy leader and a close ally of Burnham, voted to allow the Greater Manchester mayor to compete to be a candidate in the seat vacated by Andrew Gwynne this week. They add that the other eight members, which included the prime minister Keir Starmer, voted ... (more) |
A Week in Politics #4In my fourth instalment of "A Week in Politics" I will be focusing on Andy Burnham, the Green Party and the "Board of Peace". I would like to write a weekly update without mentioning Donald Trump at all. Sadly, that still isn't an option so long as the potential consequences of his actions remain impossible to ignore. This week's stories point to a wider pattern: parties tying themselves in knots, voters refusing to behave as expected and international norms being undermined by personality over principle.More importantly, this week's events highlight the need for fewer strongmen and more seriousness, pluralism and ... (more) |
Ed Davey on Kuenssberg: Lib Dems have a moral obligation to winEd Davey did his traditional start of year interview with the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg this morning. The conversation started with Donald Trump backing down on his disgraceful comments about British troops in Afghanistan. Ed said he was grateful to the King for his intervention but said that this didn't change his view of Donald Trump who has supported Putin on Ukraine. They moved on to discuss defence spending. Ed acknowledged that we do need to act. Liberal Democrats have argued that we need to increase defence spending. We've called on the Government to issue war bonds. The Government hasn't shown ... (more) |
The Joy of Six 1466Jess Asato, Labour MP for Lowestoft, says AI nudification is the latest weapon of violence against women and girls: "Using AI to strip a woman of her clothes is the modern equivalent of locking her in stocks in the town square and throwing rotten fruit at her. It is a weapon of shame, designed to humiliate. Like other pillories, it is meant to send a message to everyone else: do not do what this woman has done." "The shortage of legal children's homes across the UK is fast becoming a national crisis. Last week, a Public Accounts Committee report revealed ... (more) |
Supremes: Standing at the Crossroads of LoveI was going to choose the Four Tops' Standing in the Shadows of Love, but I got reading and found that some sources suggest it was a reworking of this earlier Supremes B-side. To my untutored ears the two records don't have much more in common than their similar titles, but that would have been a very Motown thing to do. Motown Junkies loves Standing at the Crossroads of Love: Vibes, organ, high notes aplenty; a shimmering crystal castle of an intro, giving way to Diana Ross, who joins in by clambering youthfully right up to the top of her ... (more) |
Tom Arms' World ReviewMiddle powers rule. Or at least they should try to. That was the message of the erudite Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at Davos this week. And as he spoke there were lot of sage heads nodding in agreement. Carney started from the premise that the old US-led rules-based world order was over, finished, kaput, dead and buried. Without specifically naming the American president, Carney made it clear that the US president had created a "rupture" in the diplomatic fabric and that humanity was entering a darker less kind world in which might makes right. In this world there will ... (more) |
William Wallace writes... Defending Liberal Democracy against populist powersAs we watch Donald Trump knock down the checks and balances built into the US constitution to constrain the powers of executive Presidents, with the acquiescence of the Republican Party, we need to think hard - and campaign about - the absence of similar checks within our own system of government. Britain's unwritten constitution has rested, as Peter Hennessy famously said, on the 'good chaps' theory of constitutional behaviour: that no political leader who won a majority in the House of Commons would ever behave in an ungentlemanly fashion. Across Europe as well as in the USA we're now learning ... (more) |
Labour Welsh First Minister snubbed by her own MPsWelsh Labour really are in a mess. Within a day of the First Minister calling on Keir Starmer to help stop Plaid Cymru and the Greens by devolving more powers to the Senedd, her Welsh colleagues vote down a proposal to do exactly that. Nation Cymru reports that a Welsh Labour MP has argued against a major amendment to the Railways Bill which would devolve powers over the railways to Wales: The amendment, tabled by the Liberal Democrats, would remove rail transport from the list of powers reserved to Westminster and require responsibility for infrastructure, investment and the long-term strategy ... (more) |