[PDF file]: […] Starmer Project: A Journey to the Right Oliver Eagleton London: Verso, 2022, £12.99, p/b John Booth First impressions can mislead, but the more I discovered here about Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer the more I became convinced that my hunches based on personal glimpses of him were correct. I saw him initially when as […]
[PDF file]: […] the rich, rather than a mass participation event. In the early 1950s, three million people were Conservative Party members, while more than a million belonged to the Labour Party. Now, the two main parties can count barely 600,000 members on their books combined. (p. 139) Once again, he seems to have a somewhat rosy […]
[PDF file]: […] equivalent of Janis Joplin but never enjoyed comparable success. 5 Peter Hain had, originally, been a very active (and visible) campaigner for the Liberal Party but joined Labour in 1977. 6 Jenner organized a set of festivals in Hyde Park in the late ‘60s and initially managed The Pink Floyd. He also thought Strummer […]
[…] broke up as it lost state support in the era of detente in the 1970s. In the context of a counter-movement against detente, former intelligence officers and labour activists attempted to develop an epistemic community around a theory of intelligence that would provide a basis for renewed state support for political warfare. This theory […]
[…] our own; we do not see what we are not already predisposed to see.’ 36 The wrong kind of member The EHRC report on anti-semitism in the Labour Party found . . . not very much;37 what they did find hinged on debatable definitions of anti-semitism; and most of it was the responsibility of […]
[PDF file]: […] per cent of the British people believe that Blair should be tried as a war criminal. I am one of that number’. Obviously the memoirs of any Labour MP with such admirable views are worth a look and Bob Marshall-Andrews’ extremely witty, indeed laugh-out-loud volume, Off Message, does not disappoint. He recalls the heady […]
[PDF file]: […] in Israel. (Lord Reid, as well as being a leading advocate of the Iraq invasion and toughness in the ‘war on terror’, is a longstanding member of Labour Friends of Israel.) Then turn to The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein and read this about Israel’s economic trajectory in the past five years: ‘Much of […]
[PDF file]: […] £22.00 John Booth Here we have two approaches to politics and public life which are also partly the story of two Neils. Neil Findlay is a former Labour member of the Scottish Parliament and a long-time grass-roots activist. Neil Kinnock was the Labour leader who helped Alastair Campbell insert himself into the upper reaches […]
[PDF file]: […] ‘forensic’ Leader of the Opposition with an arsenal of ammunition that Rumpole of the Bailey could only dream of after his third bottle at Pomeroys. Here’s the Labour leader’s starter for 10. ‘Has the Prime Minister, known for his voracious appetite for new experiences, yet dipped into the diaries of the former Member for […]
[PDF file]: Peer group pressure Colin Challen Whilst engaging in the topical parlour game ‘Who in the Labour Party is trying to shaft Jeremy Corbyn?’, my mind naturally turned to the master of dark arts, Lord (Peter) Mandelson. I took a look at his entry in the House of Lords Register of Members’ Interests, where I […]
