The King’s Speech

The first monarch’s speech to Parliament written by a Labour Government in many years. It is reviewed by the Guardian, who welcome it as radical but not revolutionary departure from their predecessors empowering the state to make life better for people. They conclude by saying, The conditions of frustration that have fuelled far-right insurgencies in…

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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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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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Labour’s Programme 2023

Labour 2023, National Policy Forum by rule responsible for proposing a programme to Conference took place behind closed doors. TL:DR, the leadership got what they wanted, “there’s no money” and it seems f’all compassion and solidarity. They obviously learnt from their own ambush of Ed Miliband in 2014. This meeting was “behind closed doors” and…

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One step beyond

Labour have are investigating Neal Lawson for a prohibited act, the reality is no-one is safe. Here are some notes and links….

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Progressive Alliance, not so fast

Someone in my feeds raised the question as to whether there was an anti-progressive alliance bias to Labour’s NEC’s approval/prohibition of local government coalitions. I looked to see if Compass had anything on it, but it seems not but I found these two links. …

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Labour’s coming manifesto 2023

Originally created to help understand the NPF process in 2023, the process culminated in the 2024 manifesto. Labour published its draft National Policy Forum report, I was told on the 9th May 2023. The Labour Party URL for the report is here, on the Labour Party’s main site and behind the members’ ID wall; I…

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Labour’s Manifesto Consultation

The Labour Party are running a ‘final’ policy consultation. Only CLPs can contribute now and it has a portal home page at the NPF site. I am reading through the commission documents and comment on some below/overleaf …

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New Britain, new britcon

Gordon Brown’s Commission on the constitution of the UK has finished its report. Much of the press focus on the proposal to abolish/reform the House of Lords but it is much more thorough than that. I wonder if in its way its as ambitious as the Chilean constitution that failed earlier this year. I feel…

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Kier Starmer’s at Lab22

This is available on youtube and as text, it is to my mind one of the best he’s given; he’s clearly more comfortable with the role than previously. The last 11 months of a polling lead which was to leap the following day will have helped, but I hope they don’t believe their propaganda that…

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Labour’s Membership

I had a look at the financial reports and plotted Labour’s membership over the last 10 years and then added another 20. Here are my notes …

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