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Category: Guest slot

How Labour need to stop worrying and learn to love the bomb

How Labour need to stop worrying and learn to love the bomb

Picture credit: The MOD twitter feed Despite its relative lack of salience as a motivating issue for voters there is an interesting discussion to be had on how a Corbynite Labour party can use defence policy to attack the Conservatives in an area of perceived strength. The last few decades of British defence policy have been characterised by constant out-of-area and expeditionary deployments that have been hindered by massive personnel reductions and scandalously poor procurement and program management. At some…

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The day of the husky?

The day of the husky?

Picture credit : WWF One of David Cameron’s early and later much-derided moves was to go to the Arctic to be seen hugging a husky: I hope it won’t be seen as partisan to say that few of us felt that Cameron had a deep-seated love of huskies: we were all clear that it was symbolic. He was detoxifying the Tories – not just about harsh efficiency, but caring about the environment too. Ultimately, though, the environment was seen as…

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Climate change denial is dead – but the fight for green votes is starting

Climate change denial is dead – but the fight for green votes is starting

Donald Trump and the politics of climate change Donald Trump’s tweet that the snow-blasted US east coast would benefit from some global warming has reignited attention to his climate-change denial. But after a year of his presidency, it’s increasingly clear that, in terms of both public opinion and policy, rejection of climate science is a sideshow. Having a climate-change denier in the White House might seem like a triumph for people who want to stop action against global warming. Trump’s…

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Three Tribes Go To War – the historical divides within the Tory Party

Three Tribes Go To War – the historical divides within the Tory Party

Charles on the various tribes of the Tory Party “I support this measure as a measure of reform; but I support it still more as a measure of conservation … the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, “Reform, that you may preserve” Three years before the Tamworth Manifesto, Macaulay’s speech on the Reform Bill prefigures the Conservative party’s core philosophy. Peel’s pledge to ensure “the correction of proved abuses and the redress of real grievances” while resisting unnecessary…

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Symbols for our time

Symbols for our time

In an age of hashtags, social media campaigns, lit candles and all the rest of it, it is easy to sneer. Such narcissism. Gesture politics is castigated as the last word in pointless posturing, mainly designed to make the politician – rather than the persons at whom it is aimed – feel good. “Action this day. Not words or images” – as Churchill did not say. But symbols and gestures do matter. Done right – an image, a simple action,…

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Compounding the problem

Compounding the problem

Picture credit : Wikimedia commons It is said to have been Albert Einstein who called compound interest “the eighth wonder of the world”, and at this time of the year when some 400,000 fresh faced students are about to set off to university for the first time, they and their parents would be well advised to study what he meant. Thanks to the application of compound interest to their student loans, this year’s new students will be faced with truly…

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Lucian Fletcher on the latest Northern Ireland assembly poll

Lucian Fletcher on the latest Northern Ireland assembly poll

The heat is on… Exclusive insight on state of play for parties ahead of crucial March 2nd vote #AE17 @LucidTalk https://t.co/CpXUbu1rLR — The Sun (@TheSun_NI) February 1, 2017 Arlene Foster’s personal ratings fall through the floor, but the DUP will bank on fear of a Sinn Fein First Minister to keep their position as lead party in Northern Ireland Assembly The first LucidTalk opinion poll ahead of the 2017 Northern Ireland Assembly election has been published and one of the…

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The EU referendum: An attempt to analyse the in-play betting

The EU referendum: An attempt to analyse the in-play betting

Michael Dent the creator of PoliticsOdds.bet, a site which tracks and graphs betting prices on political events, looks at the EU Referendum in-play betting At 11:36pm on June 23rd, just before the first result was declared, the market was just short of 90% confident of a Remain vote. So much for markets knowing best – the market was wrong, and staggeringly confident in its wrongness. So how did we get from there to settling the market for Leave? What follows is an attempt…

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