Browsed by
Author: David Herdson

The hurricane on Labour’s horizon

The hurricane on Labour’s horizon

Comments 0 Comment

Labour can’t rely on election campaign miracles every time As Labour gathers for its annual attempt to spread a veneer of forced goodwill over ruthless power-plays, rather like a Game of Thrones family Christmas, they ought to be asking a rather different introspective question than ‘how does Momentum increase its control?’. They should be asking ‘how do we get out of this disastrous polling position?’. They almost certainly won’t. Because the truth is that Labour’s polling position – buttressed by…

Read More Read More

Mayor of London Siobhan Benita? Don’t rule it out

Mayor of London Siobhan Benita? Don’t rule it out

Comments 0 Comment

SV means the Lib Dems could pull off something extraordinary In the absence of big names and big characters, London politics has dropped off the media radar a bit. After the controversial Ken Livingstone and the future PM Boris Johnson, Sadiq Khan has been – spats with Donald Trump aside – a lower-profile mayor. Khan’s term ends, however, in less than eight months, when he’ll bid for re-election. Until recently, this was all-but assured. The Tory candidate, Shaun Bailey, looks…

Read More Read More

The Courts should be an emergency backstop to parliament, not an active player nor a spectator

The Courts should be an emergency backstop to parliament, not an active player nor a spectator

Comments 0 Comment

The Supreme Court has the chance to rebalance the relationship between the Courts and politics The Brexit process might have inhibited growth, deterred foreign investment, broken political parties and bitterly divided politics, generated political violence and protest not seen for decades and placed a perhaps irredeemable strain on the Union but it has at least help clarify some important points of constitutional law and for that we should be grateful. The next of these points will be determined when the…

Read More Read More

A Tory is value as Next PM

A Tory is value as Next PM

Comments 0 Comment

Boris is unlikely to be a 10-year PM but he might well win a GE This has not been Boris Johnson’s finest week. A series of humiliating defeats in Westminster, an underwhelming PMQs, harangued on the campaign trail, caught out using policemen for partisan ends and left to dangle in Number 10 without either an electoral escape or a means of leaving the EU by the foolishly promised 31 October. Of course, there may be some great grand plan cooked…

Read More Read More

A general election could unlock a restoration at Stormont

A general election could unlock a restoration at Stormont

Comments 0 Comment

Brexit isn’t the only issue stoking the tensions in Ulster Northern Ireland rarely gets much coverage from the mainland British press. Riots generate a fraction of the coverage that a similar one in England or Scotland (never mind London) would get; the recent Harland and Wolff closure was only of interest because of a ship that sank 107 years ago; its sporting competitions are, like its politics, a different world. Here be dragons. For once, however, Northern Ireland can’t be…

Read More Read More

Clarke’s TANDA – what about all the other positions?

Clarke’s TANDA – what about all the other positions?

Comments 0 Comment

This might easily be an insuperable barrier, even if the PM isn’t Let’s make the heroic assumption that the Tories are brought down in a Vote of No Confidence, Corbyn cannot gather the support to form a government but he reluctantly concedes that if someone else can, on a temporary basis, in order to secure an Article 50 extension and then trigger a general election, Labour will support that. This is, frankly, a long shot. Corbyn has not sounded at…

Read More Read More

The coming Battle of Brighton could determine the fate of Brexit

The coming Battle of Brighton could determine the fate of Brexit

Comments 0 Comment

If Labour sticks to its current fudge of a policy, No Deal is the likely outcome Conferences don’t usually matter. These days, they’re mostly occasions when the party can try to sell itself and its policies to the media and the public – a glorified party political broadcast, if you like – while also acting as a bonding exercise for members of that party. It doesn’t always work out like that of course, but those are the primary aims. For…

Read More Read More

Woodcock is right: Remain’s grand strategy is so muddled as to not exist

Woodcock is right: Remain’s grand strategy is so muddled as to not exist

Comments 0 Comment

What use do Remainers hope another A50 extension would be put to? Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan is commendably clear: leave on 31 October without a deal. The clarity might be the only thing that’s commendable about it and it leaves many questions open about what happens into November and beyond but on the central point of Britain’s EU membership, the issue would be closed. Johnson and the rest of the government might argue that No Deal isn’t technically the government’s…

Read More Read More