Kier Starmer and Resolution Foundation

At the launch of the Resolution Foundation’s report, “Ending Stagnation”, [Press Release], they had a bunch of speakers, including Sir Kier Starmer, Labour’s Leader, whose speech is posted at Labour List. It seems Hunt was also there. Here are some notes and links …

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Von der Leyen again

Ursula von der Leyen made a speech in which she said the EU had goofed up over Brexit. I have a number of articles collected in response to this speech, which I will add to this page at a later stage. But today I have reproduced an article entitled “Goofy” from EuroIntelligence, because it is…

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Politics in Poland

What’s happening there? Tusk’s Centrist coalition has just won the election but I was challenged as to what I could do to help fight the far-right in Europe and given where I live and that the largest European ethnic minority in the UK is Polish, I thought I’d have a look at what’s happening there.

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Who has the best song?

It seems Keir Starmer has chosen “Ode to Joy” as his choice as a representative song for the Labour Party, strangely given his “Not in 50 years” position, but it made me wonder who has the best anthem, I have made a little poll, sorry it’s a bit ugly but I don’t pay for the…

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Catalonia

When the Catalunya independence movement made a declaration of independence, the reactions of the People’s Party led Spanish government were harsh and immediate. Today, the PSOE needs the votes of their successors to sustain their government. They are planning to pass an amnesty law, which the right wing opposition are calling an attack on the…

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EU Reform

What chance is that there’ll be a convention and that the TEU will be amended progressively?

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Money & Lies in Starmer’s Labour Party

Novara Media point me at some work, presented in an article in the Times by Gabriel Pogrund and Harry Yorke who track the role of Labour Together and its shady fund raising, Novara say, According to the Sunday Times account, between 2017 and 2020 McSweeney failed to declare £730,000 in donations from a slew of…

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Some reminiscences

I visited the People’s History Museum; I was looking for something specific on NOLS, the Labour Student organisation, in the 70’s, which I sort of found. I also found some other things, which interested me and so here are my notes …

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Sailing the High Seas, reforming and enlarging the EU

For reasons, I made a wiki page, called Labour’s Turning Point, which looked at matters in the Labour Party on the topic of the European Union following Starmer’s speech/interview in Montreal in Sept 23. I argued that , it needs to be seen in the context of the EU’s consideration of its own reform which…

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Germany’s future

In this article in the New Statesman, Walter Münchau looks at the macro-economics and industrial policy of Germany and predicts its failure and notes the effect of ‘leaving behind’ the old East in particular in its politics with the rise of the AfD. The article is subtitled, “The country is in economic and political crisis…

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Data Protection and Digital Information (No. 2) Bill

It seems that GoNads screwed up the Tories first attempt to amend the 2018 Data Protection Act which implemented the GDPR in the UK. The current data regulation regime has earned the UK an adequacy ruling from the EU commission. This page documents my thoughts on this current attempt to amend the law.

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Labour’s turning point?

Over the second half of September, a couple of things happened with respect to the Labour Party’s position on relations with the EU. I want to write something punchy, and made this page to collect my sources and shape m thoughts. This may not be easy to read because it as yet has no narrative….

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About the Eurofighter, and its future

What’s happening to the Eurofighter Typhoon? Do we need a replacement, and who’s going to build it? In this article, What does the future hold for Eurofighter Typhoon?, Air Force Technology suggest that it’s design is old, and that the older versions are being retired; they argue that the Tempest programme is an upgrade programme…

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