The Mirror Crack'd

Andy Burnham's bid to win the Makerfield by-election has focused a lot of attention on 'Manchesterism', but another big regional city once set the trend nationally. I refer, of course, to Birmingham, Britain's second city in terms of population and geographic size. This title is hotly-contested by Manchester, both in terms of its metropolitan size and its economic and cultural importance. However, there is no doubt that, historically at least, Birmingham was hugely influential in the building of the civic and municipal structure of modern Britain. While the same argument can legitimately be made for Manchester, it was undoubtedly the election of Joseph Chamberlain as Mayor of Birmingham in 1873 that gave his city the edge. Chamberlain, a radical Liberal, spearheaded what was dubbed the "gas and water socialism" movement, bringing these vital utilities into public ownership. The profits were reinvested into slum clearance, the construction of paved roads, parks...

Rarely can an unassuming working class suburb in the North West of England have witnessed such a media frenzy. Now that its sitting MP, Josh Simons, has applied to join the Chiltern Hundreds (a Westminster legal fiction meaning, in everyday parlance, he's tendered his resignation from the House of Commons), the former pit village of Makerfield near Wigan in Greater Manchester has become the epicentre of the British political universe. Having only just returned a full complement of Reform councillors in the recent local elections, the departure of its Labour MP will throw all the pieces of the political jigsaw up in the air once more. But not only at the local level; the fact that the seat is due to be contested by none other than Andy Burnham, a local lad and popular incumbent Mayor of Manchester, has lent the by-election national significance. As a consequence, the media has piled into town and will be pestering folk for soundbites for weeks to come as they attempt to dodge the tr...

How much do good looks count when it comes to political leadership? I've been pondering this apparently frivolous question since seeing Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, deftly handling the controversy surrounding his robust defence of granting permission for the hantavirus-struck cruise ship, MV Hondius, to dock in Tenerife. He is an astute political operator, intelligent, calm and charming, but he is helped by also being strikingly good-looking. Standing at just over 6' 2" tall, he has the same suave, relaxed Gary Cooper-esque bearing that Barack Obama also benefitted from. Frankly, neither Keir Starmer nor Wes Streeting enjoys such a physical advantage, whereas Andy Burnham (although a relatively petite 5' 10") clearly does. Sánchez's cool charisma stood in stark contrast to the bumbling performance of the rightwing President of the Canarian government, Fernando Clavijo - a far less physically appealing man, to put it politely. So, in the UK context, w...

Sir Keir Starmer has just delivered what was billed as 'the speech of his life' - it landed like the proverbial lead balloon. What Starmer has obviously failed to grasp is that he is the problem. Never an inspiring public speaker at the best of times, no amount of oratorical, rhetorical flourish could have come to his rescue on this occasion. To put it crudely, you can't polish a turd, although he tried valliantly this morning to roll it in glitter. He seems to feel that because in 2024 he delivered a Labour government for the first time in fourteen years - admittedly no mean feat after their trouncing in 2019 - on a slogan of 'change', he had made good on his side of the bargain with the British people and in 2026 it's 'job done'. This is utterly delusional; how long can he expect the British people to wait for a sign that the good times might actually roll? Pleading Brexit, Ukraine, Covid and now the Middle East, while perfectly valid, simply won'...

Regular readers may have noted my prolonged silence of late but the seismic outcome of the May 7th elections in Great Britain has roused me from my Trump-induced torpor. Rendered temporarily - and unchacteristically - speechless by the swirling madness of recent world affairs, I have been re-energised by the extraordinary turn of domestic political events. There can be little doubt in anyone's mind (apart, perhaps, from incumbent Labour Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer's) that the old 'two-party' system of politics in Great Britain (ie: England, Scotland and Wales - Northern Ireland having a different party set-up and not being involved in this particular electoral cycle), where power has oscillated between the Conservative and Labour parties for a century, is finally at an end. It has limped on in Westminster politics since Tony Blair's half-arsed devolution project of the late-1990s, but in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, nationalist parties have been empowe...

                                                                                                                                                                   Chapter I It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young man in possession of a decaying house must be in want of an architect. That was never truer than in the present case of the young Lord Baramdene who found himself shivering in a bedchamber of his late uncle’s house, which he had but lately inherited and only now entered for the first time, seeking shelter from a raging winter s...