The most promising result for Labour
The long leadership campaign is over and the most promising candidate from Labour’s point of view has won. The next significant events are next week’s elections by Labour MPs to the shadow cabinet and...
Brian Barder's website and blog Brian Barder's website and ephems
Tony Blair’s chapter on Kosovo: a travesty
I shan’t buy Tony Blair’s book: judging by the extracts I have read, it would do bad things to my blood pressure. But I have read the Kosovo chapter, which is about as mendacious...
Labour List tops Labour blog poll: Ephems comes in at 77!
Congratulations to Alex Smith and Mark Ferguson of the Labour List blog on coming first in the list of 100 best Labour blogs — the latest results of a poll conducted by the (right-of-centre)...
Four Last Songs at the Prom
If April is the cruellest month (and I could never see why it should be), September, signalling the decline of summer and the approach of autumn, is surely the saddest. So Strauss’s Four Last...
How to vote for Labour’s leader: more complex than it looks
This week I was going to vote for 1. Diane Abbott, 2. Ed Miliband, 3. David Miliband, 4. Andy Burnham, and 5. Ed Balls. But I have been persuaded by an expert’s analysis of...
Five Days in May (III): the lessons for Labour
In the five hectic days between the election results on 6 May 2010 and the appointment of David Cameron as prime minister on the 11th, Labour never had a chance of a deal with...
In those Five Days in May, the LibDems made the wrong choice (with 21 & 23 Aug updates)
The LibDems made the wrong choice in May, not in going into coalition with the Tories instead of with Labour, but in going into coalition at all. With the experience of 100 days of...
Cameron’s 1940 double-fault: we were neither a junior partner nor ‘alone’
David Cameron dropped a memorable clanger in Washington, saying the UK was the “junior partner” in the World War II fight against Germany in 1940 – and then dropped another one trying to correct...
Diplomacy: the national interest or the ethical dimension?
In an article in The Hague Journal of Diplomacy I discuss the two traditional rival views of the function and purposes of diplomacy: the (often competitive) pursuit of the national interest, versus the (mainly...
In the coalition politics era Labour should court, not vilify the LibDems
Several lessons for Labour need to be learned from Nick Robinson’s BBC programme Five Days that Changed Britain, broadcast on 29 July, about the five days in May between the election and the formation...