This week I picked up Andrew Pearman’s The Politics of New Labour: A Gramscian Analysis. It’s a book with a title that seems designed to disappoint readers as it isn’t really an analysis of New Labour, Gramscian or otherwise. Much of the book is an excuse for an ex-communist (turned Green) to complain that New […]
Mitt Romney and George Osborne: Proof of an alien communist conspiracy sent to foment a worldwide revolution?[i] Although I have no proof to support the assertions I am about to make,[ii] this article will argue that the leaders of the world’s conservative parties (and their fellow travellers in the global uprising that has become known […]
Science fiction doesn’t often do politics. There’s no shortage of sf writers willing to explore ideology or, more frequently, shove their personal ideology down a reader’s throat in the crudest way imaginable, but engagement with the real way that societies make policy decisions is not often the focus of interest[i]. However, Jason Heller’s debut novel, […]
…and also the department of, in the politics of image control, the more things change, the more things stay the same. “A distinguished scholar of Macedonia and Alexander, the Cambridge historian GT Griffith, once observed with a certain amount of frustration: “It is one of the paradoxes of history (and of historiography) that this king… […]
I have been thinking recently that a lot of the science fiction books I’ve read in the last few months are particularly cruel about the lives of ordinary people. Take this passage by James Lovegrove in Redlaw, which attacks The Daily Mail reader mentality: “There’s a reason why that rag is as popular as it […]
The last time the Labour Party lost its place as the “natural party of government” at the end of the Wilson/Callaghan era in the late 1970s, the party descended into internal chaos and a state of open warfare existed between three poles in the party – the left and right of the Party hated each […]
So Diane Abbot got involved in a conversation about race relations in the UK and said something overly simplistic and stupid in a Tweet: “white people love playing “divide and rule”. We should not play their game #tacticasoldascolonialism”. Cue Twitterstorm and screeds of outraged commentary from the right and a ridiculous over-reaction from a Labour […]
Politics is a funny thing. Or, rather, people’s expectations in politics are funny. Yesterday morning, I confess, I woke up rather confused. There seemed to be lots of people rushing around claiming that the Lords were going to save the NHS. Crossbenchers, Lib Dems and, god help us, Lord Owen, were going to “go rogue” […]
Demos yesterday published a new report “Truth, lies and the internet: A report into young people’s digital fluency” by Jamie Bartlett & Carl Miller. While it contains a number of points that can’t, reasonably, be disagreed with, it’s one of those reports about the “internet” that lacks a proper historical and social context, drawing parallels […]
So, Ed the Leader has spoken. It was one of those speeches that I’ve got too used to as a member of the Labour Party where our representatives say some sensible things but then wrap them around a wad of stupidity calculated to appeal to the centre even as the right (Labour and Tory) and […]