Economics, economics, economics. That’s what the 2010 UK election was about, and it seems to be the main thrust of the American one. Unemployment and job figures are the battlefield. Gross Domestic Product and AA+ credit ratings are the weapons. The Federal Reserve might be a potential ally, and the […]

Settle down there at the back. No sniggering. Yes, it’s THAT time of year again when our political parties get together for their conferences. First up among the three main parties are the Liberal Democrats – or, as many people refer to them these days, ‘the FibDems’.  You remember why they got […]

Aneurin Bevan, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party between 1959-1960 once said ‘‘No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. ..So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.’’ Quite […]

If ever there was a turning point in British postwar history, it was the Miners’ Strike of 1984-85. When the strike ended in defeat for the National Union of Miners (NUM), the full force of Thatcherite monetarist policies could be more thoroughly unrolled. Without the defeat of the NUM, the […]

Watch any TV news report, political show, read any newspaper article, and you will find a common thread amongst our political class across the main parties. ‘We have no money’ they say. ‘The cuts are necessary’. ‘We must reduce the deficit’, and, of course, the phrase that will be hung […]

On Wednesday a parliamentary bill to introduce a mainly elected House of Lords will be published. Inside the so-called ‘Westminster bubble’, MPs are jostling for position while trying to work out who will support the Government’s plans and who will vote against the proposed legislation. The bill has strong support […]