This year’s local elections were predictably catastrophic for the Tory party, but perhaps more significantly Labour went backwards at a point in the electoral cycle when any aspiring party of government should be devouring the opposition.
There was a clear Brexit gradient in effect, with Labour’s vote falling most in heavily Leave areas while the Tories lost a full one-third of the seats they contested in majority-Remain areas. But the underlying dynamic was anti-Big Two sentiment, with John Curtice noting that ‘what the two parties had in common was a tendency for their support to fall more heavily in their heartlands. (more…)

RMT activitst Eddie Dempsey has been denounced by MP Clive Lewis and Labour strategist Paul Mason as a ‘Tommy Robinson empathising, racist, anti-Semitic, working class imperialist’. But his only crime was in taking their own strategy – previously characterised as ‘socialism without the working class’ – and returning it to them unfiltered. Tellingly, none of his many Twitter critics actually denied the core of his allegation. What really bridled was Dempsey’s insistence that the rise of the populist right was one of the consequences of the liberal-left approach. (more…)

Anti-fascism and democracy are inextricably linked. If liberals regard democracy as inessential, how long can it be before anti-fascism is looked upon with similar regard?

Recent research on anti-Semitism in Europe by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights has found that, among other things, close to 40% of European Jews have considered leaving their home countries over the past five years, while almost 90% of respondents claimed anti-Semitism had increased since 2013 with the strongest response in France, and 41% of German respondents said they had experienced anti-Semitic harassment over the past year.

Interestingly, when those polled across Europe were asked about the identities of their assailants, 30% responded that the perpetrator was ‘someone with an extremist Muslim view’ and 21% that the perpetrator was ‘someone with a left-wing point of view’. Those with a ‘right-wing political view’ were identified as being responsible in 13% of anti-Semitic incidences, some way down the list.

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The defeat of Theresa May’s Brexit deal in the Commons followed by her survival of a pro-forma confidence vote signals the end of the Brexit ‘phoney war’.

Labour under Corbyn have, until now, avoided taking a clear position either way on the matter, and for understandable reasons. They want to hold together their fragile electoral coalition for as long as possible, try to force a general election, and capitalise on the chaos. It is a reasonable tactical approach, if not a principled one.

The failure of the confidence vote seemingly puts an end to this strategy, with the Lib Dems telling Labour that ‘spurious further attempts at no confidence motions right now would only facilitate Jeremy Corbyn’s ongoing procrastination … It’s time for Corbyn to choose – does he back Brexit or does he back the people?’ (more…)

Regarding the knife crime epidemic, why is it the experts appear to be unwilling or unable to distinguish between cause and effect?

With the particularly vicious murder of 14 year old Jayden Moodie in Leyton sparking the usual handwringing in the media, fingers are again pointed in all directions – ‘austerity’, ‘racist police’, ‘single parent families’, ‘gang culture’, ‘drill music’ and, currently trending, ‘school exclusion’. But what no one can seem to agree on is – what is cause and what is effect?

If being excluded from school is being pointed to as a possible reason the latest young victim had taken a wrong turn in life, then the same mitigation would most likely apply to his killers too (who may turn out to be not much older), who stabbed him to death while he was lying prone and unconscious in the road after they deliberately ran him down. In truth it is only those who adhere to what is the lumpen ‘wolf and sheep’ philosophy that can rationalise the wanton overkill. (more…)