A Free Left Blog

" Every consensus is based on acts of exclusion ." ~ Chantal Mouffe. Labour’s main problem came into focus for me yesterday when I was watching the BBC News Channel. Rupa Huq, the new Labour MP for Ealing Central and Acton (congratulations to her for winning) came on and started boasting about Labour’s success in London, linking it to London as a place where UKIP doesn’t do well and drawing a contrast between the diverse, relatively well-educated capital and the rest of the country. This sort of ‘London exceptionalism’ makes some people feel very good about themselves but it doesn’t seem calculated to appeal to many outside the capital nor indeed many former Labour voters. It’s common currency among London Labourites though, and it’s telling that the contrast is most enthusiastically illustrated by contrasting Labour to UKIP . On this dimension the ‘us’ stands in contrast to a ‘them’ composed of UKIP and UKIP voters. The contrast draws its fuel from a ...

Over the last few years of Ed Miliband’s leadership I have become used to being rather impressed with his annual conference speech and then finding myself gradually losing faith as the months have drifted by with little or no follow-up: indeed with little of interest emanating from Labour. His latest speech yesterday – the last at conference before the 2015 General Election – felt like that whole year’s cycle compressed into an hour. Early promise – with a few interesting and engaging ideas – was followed by a whole load of drift interspersed with a kind of paint-by-numbers approach to pleasing the activists, notably by mentioning the NHS every few minutes. Ed Miliband making his 2014 Conference speech As the speech drifted, so I drifted and started thinking about other stuff, like: What’s for dinner? Maybe my toenails need cutting? Is anyone on Twitter being more interesting about the speech than the speech itself? (Answer: ‘Yes’). It wasn’t surprising to find out l...

The Labour Party of which I am part is hopelessly mixed up on race and diversity. On one hand we cosy up to organised racial (Black Minority Ethnic or BME/BAME) groups and promise them special favours. But then we turn to the old white working classes that used to form the bulk of our vote, telling them we are on their side, something they are increasingly less inclined to believe, and with some reason. This article of mine on the Spectator Coffee House blog takes a look at this mixed-up situation through a couple of interventions from shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan either side of the recent Local and European elections (click here if you want to have a look). For more on this topic, see Identity politics and the left page .