Politics

If you want a monument to the winner-takes-all conservatism developed by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and reduced to absurdity by George Osborne and Donald Trump, look at the pulverised public realm and browbeaten citizenry around you. The project is a wreck. And I have seen few better examinations of its ruins than The New Serfdom, published tomorrow by the Labour MP Angela Eagle and Labour researcher Imran Ahmed. Arguments have their time. The self-confidence with which Eagle and Ahmed take apart the ruling ideology ought to be a sign that Britain is ready for a reforming government that can ease the pain and remedy the injustices the Conservatives have presided

The Shadow Foreign Secretary has called for the Home Secretary to resign over the Windrush debacle that has been dominating the newspaper headlines over the past week. The government has u-turned and apologised after threatening to deport Caribbean migrants who could not provide proof of their decades of residence in the UK, with some of those affected having been refused jobs and access to healthcare as a result. To add insult to injury, it was revealed that the Home Office had destroyed the landing cards for immigrants who arrived aboard HMT Empire Windrush, thereby removing a vital source of documentation. The government has since said that it will provide compensation

The BBC’s decision to re-broadcast Enoch Powell’s so-called “Rivers of Blood” speech in its entirety this week has excited just the shouting match that was to be expected. On the one hand, there has been liberal fury at the honour supposedly paid to a speech that endorsed and encouraged racial hatred. On the other, the standard defence of Powell’s line of argument: that he was not encouraging a race war, but predicting one and seeking to head it off.  What’s striking on revisiting the speech is that, for better or for worse, Powell predicted and encompassed both those points of view in the speech. It’s customary, in the scheme of

The government ends what has been a truly dismal week with a row over whether or not Theresa May supported ‘go home’ vans and reports that Amber Rudd privately boasted to the prime minister that she would give immigration officials greater ‘teeth’ to accelerate the UK’s deportation programme. There is much frustration in No 10 over how this week has played out. Despite winning all Commons votes on Syria and the much-anticipated Commonwealth celebrations, what was supposed to fly the flag for global Britain has manifested into a row over hostile environments and anti-immigration rhetoric with the Windrush scandal. Part of the difficulty is that No 10 are struggling to blame

A couple of weeks ago I wrote two pieces about a very rum collection of ‘academics’ who had written to The Guardian defending Jeremy Corbyn from accusations of anti-Semitism.  Since then it is safe to say that the debate has not gone their way.  Or to put it another way – particularly after Tuesday’s debate in Parliament when Jewish Labour MPs and others testified to the racism now rife within the Labour party – there is even more evidence of anti-Semitism in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party today than there was when those forty ‘academics’ wrote to the Guardian. Of course back then I had a bit of fun with the fact

And we’re back to Brexit with a bump. After a brief pause in the negotiations and legislation, the government has this afternoon been defeated on a customs union amendment in the Lords. The defeat was by no means minor either – peers voted by 348 to 225 in favour of a plan requiring ministers to report on steps to negotiate a continued EU-UK customs union. This in itself isn’t catastrophic for Theresa May. When the bill returns to the Commons it will most likely be thrown out – and besides it only binds the government to report on the steps being taken to negotiate a customs union so there is