As I entered my teenage years I began to struggle with an embarrassing addiction. Things got so bad it even started to strain my physical health, and eventually I would require professional help. I should clarify that my juvenile dependency was not drugs or alcohol, but the comparatively innocuous computer game Championship Manager. 

All-day binges had resulted, an optician told me, in the potential development of a lazy eye. This was likely the result of having measles as a baby, but the marathon gaming sessions had brought it to the fore. I would now have to wear a corrective eye patch. 

Looking back, it’s hard not to feel wistful about such harmless temptations (the patch did the trick after a few months). Without the Internet or smartphones, there was no cyber-bullying or social media to impart bizarre wellness advice or disseminate body dysmorphia. There was no online pornography, with such material requiring intrepid exertion back then.  ...  Continue reading

The British public is increasingly willing to place its trust in a centre-right party with no major spending commitments, which is looking to make Brexit work and which aims to reduce the national debt over the next parliament. The only problem for Rishi Sunak is, that party is Labour. 

Polling conducted by YouGov and reported earlier this week found that Keir Starmer’s party is now more trusted than the Tories on issues such as immigration, tax and crime. In areas of its own historic strength, Labour leads appear unassailable. It is 23 points ahead of the Tories on housing, a figure which rises to 27 points on the NHS. Even on Brexit — perfidious terrain for the party in recent years — the Opposition has inched two points ahead.  ...  Continue reading

Every July several thousand trade unionists converge in the Dorset village of Tolpuddle. They do so to commemorate the Tolpuddle Martyrs — and what is widely regarded as the genesis of the British Labour movement.

When I attended last summer, it was obvious the crowds were much smaller than during the Corbyn era. Perhaps the lingering memory of Covid was why, but even for those present it was clear that the energy of recent years had gone. 

There were some exceptions, however. One was Angela Rayner. Taking to the stage Labour’s deputy leader was every inch the firebrand and felt like an emissary from the recent past. Labour would scrap zero hours contracts she cried, while workers in the gig economy would immediately benefit from getting the Tories out. Importantly, there would be a single category of worker endowed with rights from day one.  ...  Continue reading

The present cap on benefits after two children is a popular policy. Even among Labour voters more people support such measures than oppose them. Meanwhile, among the wider public, 60% think the present settlement should be retained.

This perhaps explains the reticence of Sir Keir Starmer to change the status quo, something he made clear while speaking to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday. Yet when Starmer sought his party’s leadership in 2020, he pledged to end the cap. Later that same year, Deputy Leader Angela Rayner labelled it “obscene and inhumane”, while as recently as last month Jonathan Ashworth, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, described the policy as “heinous”. Other earlier critics from the shadow cabinet include Wes Streeting, Ian Murray and Jonathan Reynolds, none of whom has now complained about their party’s latest position — nor offered their resignation.  ...  Continue reading

“By hand or by brain” is perhaps the most memorable phrase contained within Clause IV, adopted by the Labour Party in its constitution of 1918. 

While it would later become a target of contempt for the party’s Right, and discarded by Tony Blair in 1995, such language — part of a wider commitment to public ownership — was intended to be ameliorative. Section four of the clause, where those words can be found, was originally a compromise to integrate socialists with social reformers.

Sir Keir Starmer is certainly not the former, but the speech he gave yesterday — on his party’s “mission” of education — sought to put cognitive and manual work on a par. The subtext was obvious in the aftermath of Brexit and 2019: Labour only wins if it seeks to defend workers of all stripes.  ...  Continue reading

There was a moment when I realised that Nigel Farage, besides the rhetoric, was a different kind of politician from those he derided. It was in the run-up to the 2016 referendum, when he was quizzed about the IMF’s gloomy forecasts if Britain opted to leave the EU. “The IMF has lost its way” Farage intoned, merrily discarding the forecasts of an organisation which, for politicians across the political spectrum, had been beyond reproach. “This is all about the big banks and the establishment protecting their interests within a cosy EU cartel that looks after multinational corporations” he tweeted that same day.  ...  Continue reading

After its short life as a caterpillar, a cocoon holds all the cells of the larva as it disintegrates into a primal soup. And yet, quite remarkably, a butterfly — despite being wholly different in almost every aspect — retains memories of its earlier state. 

It is from this biological process that we receive the word “metamorphosis”, a phrase often used in politics. And yet if you read Sir Keir Starmer writing for the Daily Express earlier this week, you would have presumed he has no recollection of his previous life as Labour’s shadow Brexit secretary. The metamorphosis of the Europhile QC into a beer-drinking Brexiteer eclipses even the greatest miracle of nature.  ...  Continue reading

It is one of the supreme ironies of recent years that, at the very moment Britain’s economic model — scarred by privatisation and outsourcing — comes apart, credible alternatives have disappeared from public view. Food inflation is now close to 20%, while companies such as Shell and BP report record profits. And while many see their living standards squeezed, the managing director of Harrods can openly admit that the “rich get richer” in a downturn. All of this should be fuel for the fire of socialist politics. Yet the two major parties look increasingly indistinguishable as they converge on issues like wealth taxes and public ownership. ...  Continue reading