Category: Politics

2016 elections: Labour needs to build a progressive alliance and adopt a new far-sighted narrative

Labour’s showing in the 2016 elections was the worst of all possible worlds:  terrible, but not quite bad enough to precipitate a change of leadership and direction, and nothing like good enough to offer...

Labour and the EU: an open letter to Mr Corbyn

Dear Mr Corbyn – or may I, a non-Corbynista, call you Jeremy? I am one of the many Labour party members and supporters, including your critics, who unreservedly applauded your big speech on 14 April...

The Brussels bombings:  no, Islamist terrorism is not a response to a western war on Islam (with clarification of 27 March)

Western governments, including our own, have made plenty of mistakes in the middle east and the Balkans since the blundering NATO attack on Yugoslavia in 1999 and the aggression against Iraq four years later,...

Waiting for Armageddon: an exchange of gloomy views

My old friend Robin Fairlie and I summoned up enough vanity to imagine that our recent exchange of emails about the state of the world might be of wider interest. So here it is. Dear...

Labour should support UK bombing of Da’esh (ISIS) in Syria to help hold the line while an interim political settlement is negotiated

After much soul-searching and wobbling, I have come to the conclusion that Britain ought to heed the call in UN Security Council resolution 2249 on countries with the capacity to do so to make...

Does Security Council Resolution 2249 (2015) of 20 November make bombing ISIL in Syria legal? Yes!

The UN Security Council’s resolution on ISIL (ISIS, Da’esh), adopted unanimously on 20 November, has received much less UK media attention and analysis than it deserves. In my view it has transformed the situation...

Trident: Mr Corbyn and the General

Jeremy Corbyn was unwise and wrong to denounce the chief of the defence staff, General Sir Nicholas Houghton, for pointing out that nuclear deterrence ceases to have any effect if the head of government...

New Statesman writers on Cameron and Corbyn: two special pieces

I have especially enjoyed two recent articles in the New Statesman and want to share my enjoyment with Ephems readers.  It’s invidious of course to pick out two articles from among so many good...

The Lords’ amendments to a government financial statutory instrument are an attempted power grab that drives a coach and horses through a vital constitutional doctrine

The Lords’ refusal yesterday evening (26.10.2015) to approve the government’s statutory instrument incorporating cuts to tax credits was gloriously right as to the substance, but catastrophically wrong constitutionally. Part of the price paid for...

Corbyn’s No to the nuclear button marks the beginning of the end of his leadership

Jeremy Corbyn has now answered at least two radio or television interviewers, who asked him whether as prime minister he would ever press the nuclear button, with the fatal word: No. This is surely...