The case against a Lab-LibDem coalition in 2015
We all — well, some of us, anyway — hope that Labour will win an overall majority in the house of commons at the next election, probably not before 2015. But to do so...
Category: Politics
Where’s Labour when the UK may be about to break up? Here’s a modest proposal
Of all the many opportunities now being missed by the Labour party for a vigorous, radical campaign to win over solid popular support, one of the saddest is Labour’s silence on the real possibility...
The EU treaty that David Cameron didn’t veto
The Tories persist in claiming that [in December 2011] David Cameron courageously and patriotically “vetoed an EU Treaty” to protect British interests, and was the first UK prime minister ever to have done so. ...
Busy snoopers in 2012 — official
There were more than half a million official requests for “data tracking of individuals” – details of the timings, originators, recipients, etc., of emails and telephone calls, but in principle not their contents –...
On MPs’ pay and summer folly
The leaders of all three major political parties, and most of their parliamentary followers, have responded with predictable horror to the recommendation of a 9% increase in MPs’ pay made by the Independent Parliamentary...
The defenestration of Julia Gillard by Kevin Rudd as Australian prime minister
[Note by Brian: The following is a blog post written for Ephems by an Australian friend of long standing about the Australian Labor Party (ALP) leadership contest on 26 June 2013 between the then...
Multi-tasking the Queen
On Friday, 14 June, the Guardian reported that David Cameron had done the Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, the special favour of arranging for him to “visit the Queen” during his visit to London....
The head of the Queen’s Canadian government sees his head of state
It’s easily and widely forgotten in Britain that “Her Majesty’s Government”, or HMG, headed by Mr Cameron at Westminster, is only one of the Queen’s 16 governments around the world. The Queen has been...
Misguided proposal for constituents to ‘recall’ their MP
I submitted the following letter to the Guardian on 1 June, in reply to a Guardian editorial inexplicably supporting the proposal now being espoused by the government for a given number of an MP’s...
New Norma Percy (Brook Lapping) documentary on ‘The Iraq War’
The new Norma Percy production in the Brook Lapping series of contemporary history documentaries is “The Iraq War”, showing on three successive Wednesdays at 9pm on BBC2, starting this Wednesday, 29 May. Norma Percy...