Today Jeremy Corbyn launched Labour’s 2017 manifesto in Bradford. Given that the draft version of the document leaked last week, a lot of the contents haven’t come as a surprise. However, there are still a few significant things to note from the 124-page document: Labour have not factored in the cost of nationalisation into their
Labour have this morning launched their manifesto for the election. A big part of being the leader of a political party is that you meet people across the country and hear a wide range of views and ideas about the future. For me, it’s been a reminder that our country is a place of dynamic,
Happy Labour manifesto day. The party has decamped to Bradford for its official manifesto launch. Aside from bashing the Tories, Jeremy Corbyn has announced a number of new policies — from raising income tax for high earners to scrapping tuition fees. However, it’s another message that has caught Mr S’s attention. In the backdrop to
One of the complaints that allies of Jeremy Corbyn often issue is that his critics – whether in his own party, the media, the Tory party or the general electorate – tend to focus on the man, not his policies. His policies are, those allies argue, actually very popular with voters — when you test
Donald Trump either has nothing to hide about his relationship with Russia — or he is hiding in plain sight, as all good con artists do. What you believe will depend on your political prejudices and how you feel about Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. The Washington Post‘s report yesterday that Trump shared ‘highly classified
Well, this is going well. In less than two hours Labour will launch its 2017 manifesto and John McDonnell has already got things off to a bad start with a questionable appearance on the Today programme. Aside from praising the decision by Labour’s new election aide Andrew Murray to trade the Communist party for the
Can we please stop pretending this is a normal election? Everyone’s at it. Gabbing about NHS funding, arguing over energy price caps. Everyone’s acting as if it’s 2015, or 2010, or any other election year of the modern period, when mildly right-wing parties and mildly left-wing parties argued the toss over fairly technical matters and
Édouard Philippe is the perfect fit to be Emmanuel Macron’s Premier Minister. A one-time Socialist who then switched to the centre-right Les Républicains, the 46-year-old mirrors the ambiguity of his president. Philippe has been the mayor of the northern port town of Le Havre since 2010 and the region’s MP for the last five years.
I see that the UK’s Lucie Jones has blamed her Eurovision Song Contest failure upon Brexit. Lucie actually came fifteenth, which was substantially higher than either she or the song deserved. Her song, ‘Never Gonna Give Up On You’, or some such egregious, banal, tripe, was a hugely boring ballad without even the redemption of
Never mind Eurovision. For Germany, the state election in North Rhine Westphalia on Sunday was the big one – the best indication of how Germans will vote in their national election in four months time. The result was a ‘political earthquake’ according to German media – a humiliation for Martin Schulz’s Social Democrats, and a spectacular
Over the past few weeks, Theresa May has toured the country meeting a carefully curated audience of Tory supporters. This has helped to cultivate the idea that Theresa May’s Team are incredibly popular across the land. Today, CCHQ changed the formula and the Prime Minister met with non-vetted members of the public, on the campaign trail
Nicholas Soames may be MP to one of the safest Conservative seats in the country — with a majority of 24,286 — but that doesn’t mean the Tory grandee is taking anything for granted. Winston Churchill’s grandson has been snapped out on the campaign trail — travelling by horse, natch: https://twitter.com/Tim_R_Dawson/status/864093380028100610 No doubt the horse
I can understand why Theresa May should want to toy with the idea of having ‘workers’ representatives on board’. As with Tony Blair and his promise to be tough on crime, and David Cameron and gay marriage, it has become a tradition in modern-day elections that a party campaigning from a position of strength makes
Theresa May has been continuing her UK-wide tour to convince voters in all corners of the country to back the Conservatives. This weekend saw the Tory campaign machine make a whistle stop tour in Belfast. The Prime Minister attended a local agricultural show and talked to farmers and families about why they must support the party. So
In the wake of Friday’s international cyber attack, it was logical to assume that yesterday’s complete shutdown of the Manchester tram system was another casualty of malicious ransomware. But bosses at Metrolink say the closure was due to a technical fault in the control network and has now been resolved. For a city that has
I don’t normally glean insights for my personal finance columns from police dramas on TV, honest. Recently, though, I caught up with series one of Line of Duty. One of the plotlines explored the middle-class money dilemma of our time: how much a good parent should shell out for their kids. A decent officer was
Usually in a general election campaign, MPs in marginal seats invite high profile party figures to their constituencies in a bid to generate interest from the local media and win over swing voters. This is certainly what’s happening when it comes to the Tory campaign — from Theresa May downwards, Conservative ministers have been busy touring
Michael Fallon – We warned the NHS on cyber security Early this morning, Andrew Marr interviewed the Defence Secretary Michael Fallon. Marr attacked the government for failing to adequately prepare for Friday’s mass cyber attack, which caused havoc in the NHS, creating many difficulties and rescheduled appointments up and down the country: Marr: What patently
Oh dear. With Rebecca Long-Bailey widely touted as Jeremy Corbyn’s far-left successor, the Labour MP will be hoping to use this election campaign to show that she’s got what it takes to lead a party. So, it was a curious decision by Long-Bailey to appear on today’s Sunday Politics but refuse to answer any questions.
With less than four weeks to go until polling day, tensions are running high between politicians from the two main parties. On the Andrew Marr Show, Michael Fallon and Emily Thornberry came to blows over Jeremy Corbyn’s links to the IRA. When the Defence Secretary criticised Corbyn on this issue, the shadow foreign secretary hit back