Opinion
Forget the papers, this will be remembered as the people’s election
There once was a time when rich newspaper moguls ruled Britain's political scene and pandering to their needs was a sure-fire way of securing a tasty majority in parliament. But on Thursday evening, as the exit polls came in showing that Labour would win 261 seats in the General Election, Rupert Murdoch stormed out of The Times' election party. The days of the "Murdoch machine" reigning supreme, it seems, were over. For the most part coverage of Jeremy Corbyn's campaign this...
In defence of Caitlin Moran: don’t be a c**t
As people queued up to vote yesterday, The Times columnist Caitlin Moran sent Twitter into a mini meltdown by tweeting: “Obviously there’s a more nuanced take on this, but, broadly, voting for Labour = not being a cunt.” As many of her followers retweeted her election day exhortation, others predictably chose to put their noses out of joint on the spikey comment she has since deleted and started tweeting angrily about being #Caitlinscunts. https://twitter.com/SteveJenks63/status/872724089659686912 Other rightwing commentators chose to grab the moral high ground...
Volunteer at homeless shelters, donate to food banks. “Say Chrissy sent you”
On Saturday night, Christine Archibald, a young woman who had given her life to help others, was murdered whilst visiting London from the Calgary homeless project she had worked with; a centre and a city that has been devastated by her loss. Christine Archibald was one of the first victims to be named and, as I read more about her and her work and discovered the news that she had died in the arms of the man she loved on...
Britain has become a nation of two halves
Of all the pictures to emerge from last night's election coverage perhaps the most poignant was one of Theresa May stood next to a black knight as she awaited her constituency results in Maidenhead. For fans of Monty Python she had become the embodiment of the knight who stands legless and armless and insists it "tis but a scratch". The election which was meant to return a comfortable majority for her had failed to return a majority at all, with...
Some Dos And Don’ts If The Tories Win The General Election
@BenGelblum Every time I think of Neil Kinnock’s famous eve of election speech before Margaret Thatcher’s landslide victory in the 1983 General Election it sends a shiver down my spine. Warning of the callous Thatcherism that Britain would suffer if she won, Kinnock’s voice hoarse from campaigning uttered his most famous lines: "I warn you not to be ordinary, I warn you not to be young, I warn you not to fall ill, and I warn you not to grow old." I was...
How will fracking, climate, pollution affect my constituency?
This interactive map below features the climate, fracking and environmental issues in your constituency with a breakdown below of where candidates stand on these issues. With the general election upon us, these are the constituencies where candidates’ positions on fracking, energy, air pollution, airport expansion and climate change issues could be decisive if you are looking for an MP who shares your concerns. Research by Mat Hope ,Deputy Editor of Desmog UK. (View the full interactive map on Google Maps (please note: the link may not...
Could little Britain be about to change the world?
By Nicholas Figgis Over the past few years the World has taken an unnerving shift to the right. The Brexit vote echoed nationalistic populism not seen since the World Wars and across the pond America voted in a President on the back of promises to build walls, spark wars and eschew crucial environmental deals in order to save low-paid jobs. Russia's President Vladimir Putin recently came to blows with France's newly-elected President Emmanuel Macron over gay rights, chemical weapons and alleged cyberattacks. The...
It’s them or us this election – and this is why –
I am over 70 and my memories go back over many elections. The whole lot were tweedle dum or tweeedle dee choices. OK I mostly gave in to the lesser of the evils and mostly voted Labour's tweedle. This is the first time there are no tweedles. It's them or us. Let's start with the context. Oxfam says about the UK: "the richest one percent of the population now owns more than 20 times more wealth than the poorest 20 percent of...
Britain Decides: Are we about to ‘snap’ out of our trance?
It was a question we posed in November last year that was to set the tone for the unravelling of the Conservative's election campaign. How, after two terms of crippling austerity cuts, dismantling of the welfare state and a referendum that was used as bait to secure a second term did the Tories ever get such strong public backing in the first place? Coming in to this snap election pollsters were predicting a huge majority for Theresa May on June 8th,...