Politics

Let’s not get too worked up if Guy Gibson’s dog ends up with a PC name This week’s vexed columnar question: should Guy Gibson’s dog still be called Nigger in The Dam Busters remake? Some of you no doubt think you know already what my line will be. And it’s true that as a second world war enthusiast of the retired-blustering-colonel persuasion, I am indeed the sort of fellow who spits in his gin when filmmakers take liberties with the period. When Steven Spielberg made out in Saving Private Ryan that the Americans won D-Day on their own, that was annoying. When the film U-571 told us that it was

Jon Cruddas, tribune of the left and foe of the BNP, tells James Forsyth his support for the PM is not unconditional, and praises James Purnell for being ‘true to himself’ Jon Cruddas, the Labour MP for Dagenham, isn’t your typical 21st-century politician. He’s relaxed, unconcerned about his appearance: the amount of spare cloth in his suits would appal a Cameron or a Clegg, and his hair is more barber-shop than salon. When I meet him in his Westminster office it quickly becomes clear that his political worries aren’t those of your average ambitious MP either. His Labour colleagues are obsessing over the wave of resignations and how best to

It is an exquisite irony that Gordon Brown, so determined to deny the British people the general election they obviously crave, has made the centrepiece of his (latest) relaunch an investigation into the Westminster voting system. Refusing to play the game, he launches a full-blown inquiry into its rules. It is the most insultingly scarlet of red herrings. There appears to be a measure of support on the Labour side for the so-called ‘alternative vote’ procedure. Under this system, voters rank the candidates in order of preference. If no candidate secures more than half the votes cast, the one who has fewest first-preference votes has his or her votes re-allocated

Martin Bright says that the party labels its enemies as ‘mad’ for Freudian reasons: ‘projecting’ its own collective and individual mental disorders upon foes and rebels alike What is it with New Labour and accusations of psychological weakness? No sooner had Hazel Blears announced her resignation from the Cabinet but dark murmurings bubbled up from Downing Street that the Salford MP ‘couldn’t handle it’. She had clearly cracked under the pressure following revelations about her expenses, it was suggested. Peter Mandelson appeared to be supportive when he told Sky News that Hazel Blears had a right to be angry that her career had ended in humiliation after doing such a

Labour had a good night on Sunday. Not Gordon Brown, not Ed Balls, not the Milibands, nor any other of the other ministers who will have been bundled out of office within the next 12 months. They are, of course, doomed. For them ahead lies nothing but months of humiliation, followed, for many of them, by unemployment. But for the Labour party as an institution it is another matter. In spite of suffering an even heavier drubbing in the local and European elections than had been predicted, the Labour party on Sunday ensured its survival and recovery to power some time in the 2020s. I am so sure of this

Anne McElvoy spots a new political type: the ‘Labrators’ who have more in common with Cameron than Brown, and may co-operate with a Tory government The Labrators are coming: cross-bred symbols of shifting political times. Labour by background and allegiance, they empathise with many of the New Conservatives’ aims and obsessions. As for the political divide, they don’t so much straddle it, as just ignore it. The only question is how far they’ll go, now that the party that dominated the landscape is a shrunken spectre of its former self. ‘The thing to watch,’ says one of the resigners from Cabinet last week, ‘is who will get involved with Project