A Free Left Blog

One of the curious things about this curious Labour Party conference for me looking from the outside has been the self-congratulation on display. The first thing I saw when I switched on BBC Parliament on Monday was a local party delegate from North London boasting about beating the Lib Dems during the last election, praising how amazing everyone was and saying what a terrible state the economy is in due to austerity. (i.e. ‘We’re great and right, that lot the public preferred over us are wicked and evil’, and ergo said public – except for the righteous denizens of North London – are wicked and evil too). That’s maybe a bit harsh; after all you can’t expect ‘hardworking’ ordinary Labour folk to turn up to a conference in an expensive town like Brighton to moan and be negative and have a crap time telling each other how deluded they are. Nevertheless, the self-congratulation looks a bit off given Labour’s successive election defeats to a Conservative Party which is ...

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 .