Politics

By Simon Bartram Tony Blair was arguably one of the boldest and most talented politicians of the late 20th and early 21st century. Domestically he is widely credited with delivering vast swathes of progressive legislation across the country, introducing the minimum wage, allowing civil partnerships, and strengthening employee rights. Britain's social values radically changed during his time in office - the values of the older generation were swept away and a new morality gained greater acceptance. Whether legislation was the...

Chatham House’s latest report indicates that the British public believe that Britain’s relationship with the EU is now more valuable than its relationship with the United States, and that marginally more people would vote to remain in the EU than leave it in the event of a referendum on Britain’s membership. Last week the international affairs think tank Chatham House released the fourth edition of its ‘Internationalism or Isolationism?’ opinion survey in collaboration with the pollster YouGov. The survey canvasses...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor While watching PMQs last week, I was so frustrated with Miliband’s refusal to answer whether he had said he was “weaponising the NHS,” I stuck two pencils in my nose and prepared to head-butt the desk, but at the last minute I thought, “They are not worth it” Well today Miliband used all his questions to ask the PM about his tax cuts to hedge funds. The PM failed to answer the question once. I...

By David Thomson I am going to take you back to around ten days before voting day for the Referendum on Scottish Independence. A poll by YouGov/Sunday Times taken between the 2nd and 5th September that showed for the first time that the Yes camp have a lead of two per cent. This panicked the so called “Westminster elite” that David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg missed PMQs to campaign in Scotland for Better Together. At the same time, former...

By Professor Christopher H. Bovis, Professor of International and European Business Law, University of Hull Inevitably, the question of UK membership of the European Union will be centred on two issues: The need for reform of EU institutions and the way the EU is governed The ability of the UK to influence EU decisions Reform is badly needed The European Union is malfunctioning. It has lost the zest of the “common market”,becoming instead a self-fulfilling prophesy of political union with disproportionally...

By Elsa Buchanan, International Politics Correspondent  In a bid to fight the recrudescence of radicalisation on its territory, the French government is launching its own “anti-propaganda” online platform under the hashtag #StopDjihadism. “Search for paradise and find hell: the jihadist propaganda wants to convince by describing a misleading " ideal world “. Recruiters deceive people by promising them a future, an ideal or a cause to defend, where they the only thing they will encounter is manipulation, barbarism and death,”...

By Helen Duff An instinct we’ve all felt at some time, whether tripping over the flat-as-a-pancake pavement – “must be something wrong with my shoes. No, seriously, these shoes have been playing me up for ages. It’s got nothing to do with the way I walk; I walk well, better than most, in fact. These shoes are just clinically defective” – to revealing something far too personal to the family dentist – I’ll let you fill that gap in for...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor I remember being at school and being caught throwing some chalk at a fellow pupil (that shows my age and level of rebelliousness). I denied it even though I had done it and everyone knew I’d done it. The more they asked the more I refused to take the blame and the worse it got. Well that is what happened to Ed today. It isn’t the initial problem, it’s the lying that makes it worse....

By Jack Peat, Editor of The London Economic    On Tuesday afternoon England and Nottinghamshire cricketer Stuart Broad sparked outrage by Tweeting about the so-called privileged position of people on the minimum wage in Britain. The problem with statistics, as Zoe Williams of the Guardian soon pointed out, is that you can use stats to prove anything if you’re willing to haplessly discount good sense and judgement; the minimum wage in Gabon is £3,672 but a suburban one-bedroom flat there...