They Blog For You

Mike Hancock tells me that the baseless accusation against him was the result of an over enthusiastic cross examination of a group of students returning to this country. There was excitement that a woman with a Russian name was working for an MP. I have been approached by three journalists [...]

Total number of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan = 334 It was a hell of a choice. Duty ruled that I had to read the Sunday Times today. Should I buy it or pay a £1 on line. I do...

Total number of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan = 334It was a hell of a choice.  Duty ruled that I had to read the Sunday Times today. Should I buy it or pay a £1 on line. I do not want to encourage payments for on-line papers - especially Murdoch ones. [...]

  An evening of bliss tonight. The Barnabas Arts Centre in Newport was the venue for a Concert of Songs by two young musicians Soprano Rhiannon Llewellyn and Guitarist Rossini Bartolotti-Hayward.  Both have been students at the Welsh College of Music and Drama at Cardiff.  The songs were by seventeenth century composer John [...]

I AM A racist. I had no idea up until this morning, when I was.informed that my racism has manifested itself in a particularly ugly act of race-oriented bigotry and vindictiveness: I have not made a financial contribution to Diane Abbott’s leadership campaign. I know! I can barely write about it, I [...]

  Tony Blair has never had a secure grip on reality. While he was swanning around the world in the General Election 2010 I was on the doorstep for five weeks talking to voters. They raised many issues, immigration, NHS, ‘scroungers’, global warming, jobs, and the credit crunch. No one mentioned ‘New [...]

      A blissful day of cleansing sunshine. A trip to rural Leicestershire to meet Labour Party idealists was the perfect way to rinse the poison of Blair's treachery out of my mind. In his interview with Andrew Marr, he revelled in boasting that he abused his office to sabotage Labour Party [...]

Who said this: “If governments don’t tackle deficits, the bill is footed by taxpayers, who fear big deficits now mean big taxes in the future, the prospect of which reduces confidence, investment and purchasing power.   This then increases the risk of a prolonged slump”?   No, it wasn’t Cameron or Osborne.   [...]

The link is to the BBC story which includes the text:The UK should have addressed its public deficit back in 2005, former Prime Minister Tony Blair has told the BBC.Speaking to Andrew Marr, Mr Blair said: "We should probably have taken a tougher fiscal position than we did."He said that [...]

I have refrained from commenting much on the Labour leadership. I have always thought it a two person race between the brothers. David is clearly the front runner, but I just feel Ed might steal it, given his sharper movement to the [...]

  'Why are you laughing?'  Two reporters asked me. One last Saturday another today. It's the story of a Russian Spy plot that is so amusing and incredible. It's tale that suggests the Russians had great foresight in seeking to recruit a spy in the LibDem Party about three years ago. Why?  [...]

It is true of politicians (as of others too) that their enemies never do as much damage to them as they do to themselves.   Blair is a living proof of this observation.   His diaries abound with his self-righteousness, his constant spin to gloss over his real motives, his inability (or [...]

So. Three great election wins. More than a decade holding the levers of power. Now the memoirs published.And what was it Tony Blair was all about? New Labour seems to me shorthand for governing without principle. A feather for each wind that blows ....Tilt this [...]

POLLY Toynbee isn’t a very happy bunny these days, is she? She expressed disappointment in Tony Blair about 20 minutes after he arrived in Downing Street, then carped on about how wonderful things would be if only Gordon Brown took over. Then, four and a half seconds after Gordon declared he [...]

Tony Blair was right about Gordon Brown. Today we have confirmation of the bitterness and disagreements at the top of the Blair government. All that spinning and all those stories turn out to have been well founded. [...]

THERE’S much talk in the blogosphere and wider media today about the Labour Party “tearing itself apart”, following interventions in the leadership election by Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, not to mention the alleged full-scale war of words between the brothers Miliband. Ha! And again I say: Ha! You think this is division? [...]

So Blair, possibly the most unpopular man in British politics, and Mandelson, the second most detested man, think Ed Miliband would be a ‘disaster’.   It takes some gall for the architects of Labour’s ruin to think they have any right to give us lessons on Labour’s prospects when their own [...]

AS LUKE Akehurst sensibly put it on Twitter this evening: Hoping for party unity as campaign ends. Choice between EM and DM ain’t benn vs healey Indeed. More importantly, this ain’t no Blair v Brown neither. Because the one thing we as a party must ensure – and must not tolerate under any [...]

1994: John Smith died on Thursday 12 May. It was agreed that the contest to find his successor would not start until after polling day in that year’s European parliament elections, held on 9 June. There then followed the largest democratic exercise ever attempted by a single [...]

So David Miliband would pose the greatest threat to the Tories?   How convenient for DM that this alleged private remark of David Cameron’s has hit the headlines, via an unidentified ‘well-placed source’,  just 4 days before voting starts for the Labour leadership.   It is of course the oldest trick in [...]

David Miliband is likeable, intelligent, articulate, but the wrong person to lead Britain.    New Labour to the core, he is the heir to the Blairite inheritance which is now so profoundly unpopular with the Labour Movement that it lost the party 5 million votes by the time of its [...]