A Free Left Blog

I must say I have found it a little strange seeing so many 'moderate' Labour MPs and activists getting angry about anti-Semitism in the party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. Where was this anger and upset during two leadership elections which re-elected Corbyn in 2015 and 2016? This sort of stuff is not new. It was well known and covered widely on blogs such as Harry's Place  and Rob Marchant's Centre-Left blog  in 2015. I also wrote about it  on this blog . The right-wing press covered it extensively. Even the Guardian published a piece by James Bloodworth setting out the charge sheet against Corbyn and his many known associations with anti-Semites. But in both elections, as I recall, none of the leadership candidates dared to raise it as a reason not to elect Corbyn as leader. Yvette Cooper, Liz Kendall and Andy Burnham in 2015 and Owen Smith in 2016 instead fought dull, dry campaigns trying to tell the membership what they wanted to hear while talking in...

Labour’s Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna has gained a whole load of plaudits with his unequivocal opposition to Universities UK’s advice on gender segregation at events hosted by universities . Umunna, whose brief covers university education, told the website Left Foot Forward : “It is deeply troubling that Universities UK has issued guidance suggesting that segregation would be tolerated at higher education institutions. It was mistaken to do so,” he said. “A future Labour government will not tolerate segregation in our universities – it offends the basic norms of our society. People should, of course, be free to practice their religion privately, at places of worship and religious events, but universities are publicly-funded institutions of teaching, learning and research and state-sponsored segregation would be utterly wrong .” So, ball placed firmly in the political net there by Umunna amidst the gathering outcry, which David Cameron and Michael Gove ...

To ‘depoliticise’ something means to take the politics out of it. It is a strange and paradoxical term when you think about it, because to take politics out of something is a political act, and to be non-political is political. After all, power doesn’t disappear when a group of people decide they don’t want it or remove it from others through ‘depoliticising’. It goes elsewhere. In practice, depoliticisation means taking a sort of politics out of something, a type of politics – probably a kind that advocates of the process don’t much like – democratic politics for example. The term has received something of an airing recently in British public debate, and one guess for by whom ... ... That’s right (or wrong): the ‘Big Six’ energy companies. Step forward Mr Tony Cocker, chief executive of Eon UK : “ It would be really helpful to depoliticise this debate [on energy] ,” Mr Cocker told MPs on 29 th October. You bet it would ... all those pesky politicians, c...