The Mirror Crack'd

As Prince observed, "parties weren't meant to last", so why are we saddled with political parties no longer fit for purpose? I was musing on this question having read that yet another Labour councillor has resigned the party whip on Oxford City Council following Sir Keir Starmer's injudicious remarks on LBC Radio about Israel's right to cut off supplies of electricity, water, fuel and food to Gaza. Cllr Barbara Coyne is the ninth Labour councillor to resign in Oxford, the twenty-second nationally so far, and her resignation means that Labour has lost its majority on the council.  Cllr Coyne has, however, informed her ex-group Leader that she will not join another party and will continue to vote with Labour in council in support of its manifesto commitments. I empathise with Cllr Coyne having myself, when a Labour councillor in a London borough, resigned the whip to sit as an Independent while continuing to vote with the group on the manifesto on which I had been e

When a Tory government claims it is embarking on “the biggest reform to the welfare system in a decade” we can expect the worst. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy 'rhymes with' Hunt, is promising wide-ranging reforms to the Universal Credit system to 'encourage' hundreds of thousands of claimants into work or to take on more hours. To be fair (if I must) some of his proposals ahead of what he is ominously calling his "back to work Budget" have been cautiously welcomed by campaigners and union leaders, especially his scrapping of the controversial Work Capability Assessment for disabled people. He also proposes paying childcare costs to those on Universal Credit in advance, rather than in arrears, while the maximum amount people on benefits can claim for childcare will be increased by several hundred pounds. So far so (possibly) good but, to paraphrase the adage, beware geeks bearing gifts. This is a Tory Chancellor we're talking about and he's far mo

Respected independent social change organisation, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), has just published the fourth in a series of reports into extreme poverty, Destitution in the UK 2023.  The Foundation's website states: "...ending poverty in the UK is a moral cause: to ensure dignity and respect for everyone, and to address exclusion and powerlessness." The fact that such an organisation, and such a report, is needed in the first quarter of the 21st century is a shocking indictment in itself but, given that the UK government is unwilling to change the status quo  and, in fact, seems set on making the situation worse, thank goodness JRF exists to challenge it. The study reveals that approximately 3.8 million people in the UK experienced destitution in 2022, including around one million children. This is almost two-and-a-half times the number of people in 2017, and nearly triple the number of children. Therefore, the need for urgent action to tackle destitution in the

My ambivalence about Sir Keir Starmer's leadership of the Labour Party is a matter of record but I have been willing to tolerate him (with gritted teeth) as the only viable option for ousting the Tories after thirteen years of misrule. However, my tolerance has been tested once again by his maladroit (one might say cackhanded) comments about the Israel-Hamas conflict. In an interview on LBC Radio he appeared to suggest that Israel had a right to cut off water, electricity, fuel and food supplies to the Palestinian Gaza Strip. As a lawyer one might have expected him to understand that what he was apparently advocating was contrary to international law. Okay, so he's a barrister but is obviously not an expert in international jurisprudence and appears not to have read Article 33 of the Geneva Convention (how many of us have?). But, at a human level at least, he should have realised that what he was saying was unconscionable. If he was unsure he should have prevaricated, or better

Over the summer I went to visit the Ragged School Museum in Mile End, a short and pleasant canalside walk from where I live in the East End of London.  The Museum had recently reopened after a prolonged closure for a much-needed refurbishment enabled by a £4.8m Heritage Lottery Fund grant. I was keen to see it and was not disappointed; the display boards were informative and moving, even disturbing, and the collections fascinating. Located on the evocatively Dickensian-sounding Copperfield Road, the Museum recreates the school for poor East End children set up in 1877 by Dr Thomas John Barnardo (he of the children's homes) in a former warehouse on the Regent's Canal.  While there, I had the pleasure of talking to Museum Director, Erica Davies, about the project. During the course of our conversation she stressed the importance of understanding the concept of destitution as distinct from poverty. I understood it to refer to grinding poverty, of course, but hadn't really cons

Despite what former Tory Home Secretary, later Conservative Party Leader, Michael Howard, asserted in 1993, the evidence for the effectiveness of imprisoning more and more people convicted of crimes is ambiguous at best. In 1993, the average prison population was 44,542. According to a paper published by the Cambridge-based Bennett Institute for Public Policy in May this year "A ratchet effect has followed as politicians competed with each other to appear tough on law and order. In May 2023, the total prison population stands at 84,940. Current government policy will see the prison population projected to hit 106,300 by March 2027."   Recent figures for England and Wales of 88,852, with judges being asked not to impose prison sentences and plans to send foreign prisoners (around 10,000) home and to rent foreign prison places don't seem to suggest that Michael Howard was right in his assertion. The fact that the UK has the third highest prison population in Europe, after t

As I write Israeli forces have yet to go into north Gaza but they inevitably will and hundreds of thousands of displaced Gazans are heading south in anticipation of this towards the city of Khan Younis and the (currently closed) Rafah crossing into Egypt.  The pictures coming out of Gaza are almost biblical, with horses, donkeys and even camels being used to transport refugees, and the few belongings they have managed to salvage, along the Salah al-Din Road towards hoped-for safety in the south of the Strip. When they arrive, however, conditions in this already overcrowded area are appalling, and even there they are not free from Israeli bombardment. Egypt is currently refusing to open the Rafah Crossing, fearing a potential refugee surge of more than one million Palestinians into the Sinai Peninsula. That fear is justified and may be a gross underestimate as it seems clear Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's unstated objective is to drive all 2.3 million Gazans out of the

On the right track? So Rishi Sunak wants to invest his £36bn saving from cutting HS2 on upgrading railway infrastructure throughout the country? As many of his conference promises unravel he has been called out by RMT union leader, the sainted Mick Lynch, for presiding over the cutting of nearly 500 posts in the crucial Track Renewal Service (TRS) organisation within Network Rail supply-chain operations. These come on the back of massive government funding cuts which mean a decline in renewals for the next five years, despite the fact that the Office for Rail and Road has made clear that Network Rail should increase planned spending on renewals by £600 million. We can trust the Tories with our public services, right? Yeah, right! Belt and road to nowhere But we're not the only country in the world which knows how to fuck up new rail infrastructure. The first section of Kenya's Chinese-built railway from Mombasa was opened with much fanfare in 2017. Two years later work on the t

Our most illiberal-ever Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, has sent out guidance to chief constables on policing pro-Palestinian demonstrations.  Yes, Cruella is at it again, this time suggesting that waving the Palestinian flag may constitute a public order offence. She writes: " Behaviours that are legitimate in some circumstances, for example the waving of a Palestinian flag, may not be legitimate such as when intended to glorify acts of terrorism". Go figure! I'd be prepared to bet that the police will interpret this as a blanket instruction to seize all Palestinan flags on sight. And, indeed, why would they not? Our already overstretched police officers haven't got time to interrogate people's motives on the streets: "excuse me, Sir/Madam/Mx, are you legitimately waving that flag or are you intending to glorify acts of terrorism?" Ridiculous. I suppose the proper response in such circumstances should be "whose acts of terrorism might you be refe

If truth is the first casualty of war the question must be, whose truth? When at his trial in 1895 Oscar Wilde was warned by prosecuting counsel to tell the truth, pure and simple, he replied "the truth is rarely pure and never simple". Truth is generally considered an absolute but in reality that is probably applicable only to theologians, philosophers, mathematicians and scientists. For the rest of us mere mortals inhabiting the grubby, messy so-called 'real' world, it's something of a fluid concept  - relative and rather dependent on one's viewpoint. For politicians, on the other hand, it's an infinitely flexible commodity. Take, for example, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. At the 78th meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Friday 22nd September he addressed the plenum holding up maps of 'Greater' Israel which appeared to herald his intention to annexe the Gaza Strip. Either the delegates present didn't

The Labour Party Annual Conference 2023 has just closed in Liverpool with a rousing rendition of The Red Flag anthem,  perhaps the only recognisable element in an otherwise totally transformed 'Socialist' gathering. There can be no doubting now Keir Starmer's iron control over his Party after three years as its Leader. It has been a rough ride and the doubters are still there, of course, but it seems that outright opposition has either been trounced or has been put on hold now that a general election is in sight and Labour's prospects of winning it look good. There seems to be a consensus that scepticism should be put to one side while the focus of efforts needs to be on defeating a tired and discredited Tory government. After Starmer's Conference address yesterday, that outcome looks a lot more likely, not harmed either by Rishi Sunak's car crash of a Tory Conference in Manchester last week. His speech had not even begun when Starmer was accosted at the podi

As if the daily images of mass destruction coming out of Ukraine weren't distressing enough we are now seeing similar horrific news coverage from the Gaza Strip as Israel blockades its population of over two million Palestinian Arabs, cutting off all power, water and food supplies and indiscriminately bombarding tightly-packed residential areas. These attacks are being mounted by Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in retaliation for rocket attacks and a shocking incursion over the border by Hamas, the ruling faction in Gaza, internationally considered a terrorist group. Hamas militants scaled the border fence to attack a music festival being held in the Israeli desert some three miles from the frontier, killing hundreds and taking dozens of hostages back into Gaza. The speed and surprise nature of these audacious attacks by Hamas caught the Israeli authorities completely unawares and have severely dented the formidable reputation of Israel's intelligence services and t

As England basks in an Indian Summer Labour's annual conference in Liverpool is bringing the party in from the cold. This is not entirely down to Sir Keir Starmer's doggedly centrist leadership; the utter incompetence of the Tory government and widespread disenchanted with Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister has played a large part in the revival of Labour's electoral prospects. Sunak's announcement last week at his own party conference in Manchester of the scrapping of the western leg of the HS2 rail project from Birmingham to Manchester has also played badly. Even amongst those many in the north who thought the scheme was misguided, its cancellation has been seen as further proof of government muddle and mismanagement, and the Tories' arrogant contempt for the north. Sunak's promise that "every penny" of the alleged £36billion saving would be ploughed back into transport projects throughout the nations and regions rang hollow and started to unravel almost

A week used to be considered a long time in politics, now a day is an eternity. Rishi Sunak made his keynote speech to his party conference in Manchester only yesterday and yet, come the dawn, it seems we are in another era. This wasn't rowing back on pledges this was jumping in a speed boat and disappearing up the Manchester Ship Canal leaving truth, integrity, decency in his wake. Two of his major promises are already unravelling and more are sure to follow. Re-commencing the HS2:link from Euston to Old Oak Common and restoring the Leamside railway line in County Durham were greeted with enthusiastic applause - not as enthusiastic as his dog whistle anti-woke comments about "people believing they can be any sex they want" (he meant gender, of course) - but I guess in his position you take what you can get. Anyway, these have barely stood the test of twenty-four hours. Not so much soundbite politics as speed of sound politics.  It now appears that the government is only

As expected, Rishi Sunak, in his closing speech to the Tory Party conference in Manchester this afternoon, announced the scrapping of the HS2 rail link from Birmingham to Manchester. He did, however, pledge to continue with the link from London to Birmingham from Euston, as originally planned, rather than Old Oak Common, though no longer delivered under the management of HS2 Ltd. His announcement at least offers some clarity of purpose and ends speculation on the future of the second leg, though on the wider picture of rail connectivity it raises almost as many questions as it answers. He very bullishly set out a list of supposed benefits arising out of the axing of the second leg and the wider distribution of the estimated £36billion saving to other rail, tram and road projects in the North of England and Scotland, plus electrified links to Wales from Crewe, but whether this will be enough to mollify angry regional mayors like Andy Street and Andy Burnham is doubtful. I expect we'

David Olusoga began his four-part exploration of the history of the United Kingdom, Union , on BBC2 last night. It made for fascinating viewing as, while much of it was familiar (at least to people of my generation who learned about it at school) Olusoga's take on it was characteristically refreshing.  For example, we were taught that Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 were English Catholics simply trying to assassinate a Protestant king. Olusoga showed, by reference to a contemporary document, that their real purpose was to frustrate James VI and I's proposal to set up a Commission to examine the formal union of his two kingdoms. This was due to be debated in a sitting of the English parliament on 5 November 1605. It still amounted to a protest about religion, of course, but its main objective was to preserve the sovereignty of Scotland as a majority Catholic country.  As we know, the planned Westmister debate was never held and while James succee

John Lewis is struggling to weather the storm assailing the British highstreet. The Partnership, which now includes the Waitrose supermarket chain, is a long-established high-end outfit founded in 1864 by John Spedan Lewis. He set up the principles by which the business operates, where workers are referred to as 'partners' and receive a dividend from company profits. The business has been in the news recently for all the wrong reasons and its high-profile Chair, Dame Sharon White, has been partly blamed for her lack of retail experience and slowness to respond to the competetive pricing challenges affecting retail, especially acutely felt at Waitrose. Dame Sharon was appointed in 2020 on a five-year contract but has just announced that she will not be looking for reappointment in 2025, making her the shortest-serving Chair in John Lewis's history. She said “having led the partnership through the pandemic and the worst of the cost of living crisis, it is important that there

The anti-monarchy campaign group, Republic, founded by Graham Smith, author of Abolish the Monarchy , is rapidly gaining membership and media coverage in the United Kingdom. Smith and his organisation garnered a great deal of attention, some of it unwelcome, at the coronation of King Charles III in London. He (Smith, that is, not Charles) and his four colleagues were arrested and detained for fourteen hours before being released without charge by the Metropolitan Police. They say there's no such thing as bad publicity. While that was certainly true for Republic it didn't work out quite so well for the Met. A year on and the movement is growing and organising, with local groups popping up all over the country. It feels like there's been a paradigm shift in attitudes towards the proposition of abolition since the late Queen's death. While Elizabeth II lived there was little appetite for change, or even protest. Most of her subjects were either supportive, ambivalent or