Politics

Winning the middle class vote has long been seen to be the key to winning a General Election, yet both politically and economically, that demographic is in decline. A new Pew Research study released today found the middle class in America, “after more than four decades of serving as the nation’s economic majority", is now matched in number by those in the economic tiers above and below it. The study found that the share of American adults living in middle-income...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor Osborne was expecting an easy ride today; he leaned across the dispatch box like a philanderer in a 1950s diner looking for, well, an easy ride. And why shouldn’t he? His “mojo” is back. Declaring war on a country always gives you better erections. Pele told me all about it. However, it turns out the RAF have flown eleven missions and carried out four strikes on oil wells in Syria, which seems fairly impotent even...

THE EU referendum is the most important vote in Britain in a generation. It will influence the UK for the rest of the century. Everything from Scottish secession to peace in Northern Ireland to the international economy are involved. It is a national disgrace that 16 and 17-year-olds will be denied a vote on their country’s future. It’s no surprise that the Conservative government has opposed votes for young people. They’ve done the electoral arithmetic. Young people are not sympathetic...

Last weekend, Callum Towler went to watch Clapton FC play at home to FC Romania. Famous for their left-wing anti-fascist fanbase, he wanted to see if politics and football had collided again in spectacular fashion, to plug a wistful hole in his heart left empty when Joey Barton withdrew his services as a political firebrand and man of the people.  I thought Joey Barton reached the zenith. The very apex of credibility in the often messy evasion of footballer into...

Anti-Muslim rhetoric is reaching dangerous levels on both sides of the Atlantic. US Republican politicians have suggested databases for Muslims, closing mosques, interning Muslims and depriving them of constitutional rights. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán claims leftists are playing into the hands of a Muslim plot to take over Europe and the anti-Islamic Pegida movement is growing, with a former EDL leader opening a branch in the UK. We’ve seen all this before. Europe’s Jews were subjected to the same...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor Today the PM repeatedly refused to apologise after he had branded MPs opposed to air strikes in Syria  "terrorist sympathisers". Cameron faced twelve requests during a debate on military action to retract his comments, which he failed to do. It has been claimed that yesterday he had told waivering Tory MPs they would be set to "walk through the lobbies with Corbyn and a bunch of terrorist sympathisers". Labour MP Caroline Flint asked, "will he...

1. Air strikes achieve nothing without sufficient ground support Everyone agrees Isis must be destroyed and driven out of their strongholds. But air strikes in isolation will never achieve this. Military experts are certain that coordinated ground support is needed to recapture cities like Raqqa. Cameron knows this; which is why his strategy before parliament contained the spurious figure of 70,000 Syrian moderates willing to fight our cause. First, this mystery army is not united. It’s made up of 100-120 different groups,...

On the economy, it’s clear why the right claim the left have run out of ideas. Under Miliband, Labour were more like a lost battalion playing catch up than real opposition, unanimous in support for austerity (although of the lighter variety) and feeble in refuting the ludicrous assertion that Brown’s fiscal policy somehow contributed to the global meltdown that enveloped international markets. The crash exposed neoliberalism as crisis-ridden, and in the vacuum where alternative, progressive ideas should have emerged, British...

Working poor will be Cameron’s legacy Everyone from Labour to the Sun claimed victory when Chancellor George Osborne reversed his plan to scrap tax credits for working families. But as the Independent reported, the poorest in Britain are still getting poorer. The Conservative government’s planned cuts to welfare will see working families lose up to £1,600 a year by 2020, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Meanwhile, 1.2 million Londoners are now “in-work poor”, meaning they fall below the...