tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50948062012-01-29T19:37:14.380ZPaul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.comBlogger8851100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-54718222449340497892012-01-29T19:21:00.004Z2012-01-29T19:37:14.387Z

Tribune column, 27 January 2012 So,farewell, then, Press TV, as Private Eye’s spoof poet E. J. Thribb would say. The Iranian state television station last week had its licence to broadcast in Britain revoked by the regulator, Ofcom, after repeatedly breaching the Ofcom code. The final straw was its refusal to guarantee that it was editorially controlled from London and not from Tehran. Last

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-30820812193768837742012-01-22T16:06:00.005Z2012-01-23T01:26:00.200Z

I’ve just received the very bad news that my old comrade in arms David Henderson has died in Turin after contracting pneumonia. I’m gutted. Dave and I became friends as libertarian leftists at Oxford University in the late 1970s – he was in the Labour Party and I was an anarchist, but our points of view were pretty much in sympathy – and we kept up with each other after he moved to Turin in 1980

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-23224841997678527152012-01-21T13:57:00.002Z2012-01-21T15:35:20.234Z

I've been reading Nick Cohen's excellent You Can't Read This Book, a cutting account of the constraints on freedom of expression in the world – well, mainly the supposedly liberal western democracies – today. I'm writing about it in Tribune next week, but in the meantime I discovered to my surprise from some elementary Googling that Submission, the short film that Theo van Gogh made with Ayaan

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-12870848358471984992012-01-19T00:46:00.004Z2012-01-19T12:18:52.676Z

I’m sad to hear of the death of Janey Buchan, the Scottish left-wing activist and former MEP, at the age of 85. She was an extraordinary woman, a crazy world-class hater – she told everyone that her memoirs on which she was working were going to be titled Shits I Have Known – yet one of the most generous people I have met in politics. No one was ruder about anyone than Janey, but she was a

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-32887115339620576582012-01-02T23:44:00.002Z2012-01-03T01:08:39.046Z

According to Labour front-bencher Liam Byrne, apropos of benefits policy: "something for something" means reward for those who are desperately trying to do the right thing, saving for the future and trying to build a stable, secure home. Right now, these families are offered too little reward and incentive – in social housing and long-term savings – for the kind of behaviour that is the bedrock

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-23627612194267613802011-12-30T15:27:00.000Z2011-12-30T15:27:38.625Z

Five zero-net-cost measures that could be implemented at once: Increase vehicle tax to £500 a year and use the income to take rail fares down to Italian levels Integrate rail and bus service timetables Legislate to make the companies that own pubs allow their tenants and landlords to buy them at market rate as a right Legislate to allow private tenants the right to buy, with the same discounts

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-53311601123633888292011-12-29T19:43:00.005Z2012-01-03T19:37:29.861Z

The latest pamphlet from the Labour moderniser pressure group Policy Network, Cameron’s Trap, got the front page lead in the Guardian today and a piece on the comment page by its authors, the historians Ben Jackson and Gregg McClymont (the latter now not only an MP but a frontbencher, which I'd not registered), so I decided to download the whole thing and read it (here). In some ways, it’s an

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-10512246252349132472011-12-21T19:21:00.009Z2011-12-31T09:51:56.694Z

Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 23 December 2011 The journalist and author Christopher Hitchens, who died last week at the age of 62, was never associated with Tribune. Indeed, in the 1970s, when he was a young journalist on the New Statesman and a member of the far-left International Socialists (the forerunner of today’s Socialist Workers Party), there was no love lost between him and this

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-67722369178563392412011-12-16T23:47:00.003Z2011-12-19T13:31:53.227Z

The death of Christopher Hitchens at the age of 62 is hardly a surprise but is sad all the same. He was a great writer and great company. I became a fan when I was a teenager and he was on the New Statesman – but I didn’t really appreciate his brilliance until the 1980s, after he’d given up on the Statesman and decamped to the United States. It was then that he really spread his wings,

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-2670987125087412602011-12-09T11:20:00.001Z2011-12-29T23:35:35.280Z

Ian Aitken, Tribune column, 9 December 2011 I was a bit taken aback when I opened my copy of the last issue of Tribune and found a piece by my old friend and colleague Paul Anderson in which he threatened to slag off his Eurosceptic chums for indulging in a little Schadenfreude over the present difficulties of the eurozone. Mind you, he didn’t actually do it, saying that it was a subject for a

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-48210185067096260642011-12-09T00:00:00.001Z2011-12-29T21:20:21.464Z

Paul Anderson, review of A Walk-On Part: Diaries 1994-1999 by Chris Mullin (Profile, £20), Tribune, 9 December 2011 The third and final volume of diaries from Chris Mullin is actually a prequel to the first two, covering his life and times as a Labour MP from 1994, when John Smith died and Tony Blair was elected Labour leader, to 1999, when he joined Blair’s government as a junior minister. A

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-32360224954859480512011-12-06T15:38:00.001Z2011-12-06T15:44:36.093Z

The death of Christopher Logue brings to an end an extraordinary life as activist, satirist, translator and poet. Mark Espiner has an excellent obituary in the Guardian here. This is his best-known poem, as first published in Tribune. Tribune, 25 March 1966 I shall vote Labour because I believe in God — and God votes Labour. I shall vote Labour because they are tolerant of traitors like Ian

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-31181055647659995322011-12-05T22:49:00.009Z2012-01-03T01:33:33.067Z

A group of Labour opinion-poll wonks have put together a case for Labour to adopt a conservative fiscal policy, In the Black Labour, which has had some enthusiastic press. The argument is simple: the voters don't like what they perceive as reckless borrowing. So stop talking Keynesian and get on with the cuts. As Jenni Russell put it in the Evening Standard today: Instead of expecting voters to

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-3517830770327250402011-11-29T00:31:00.001Z2011-11-29T00:31:21.385Z

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-9994162454684231342011-11-27T21:17:00.001Z2011-12-29T20:19:34.712Z

I share the enthusiasm of many for the high-modernist experimentation in the arts that was part of the early phase of the Russian revolution, but the current exhibition at the Royal Academy,"Building the Revolution: Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935" (until 22 January) is a disappointment. They've got a marvellous attempt to construct a scaled-down version of Vladimir Tatlin's never-built

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-72357935951247985332011-11-24T00:05:00.006Z2011-11-25T15:11:44.262Z

Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 25 November 2011 Eurosceptics crowing about how they have been vindicated by the Eurozone crisis are beginning to drive me nuts. I don’t think they have been vindicated, but that’s for another column. What matters now is this: 1. Like it or not, a calm negotiated dissolution of the euro is not possible It is true that currency unions have in the past been

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-1682989269725966542011-11-10T11:48:00.000Z2011-11-10T11:48:01.590Z

The sociologist Frank Parkin, who has died at the age of 80, was my political sociology tutor at Oxford more than 30 years ago. I saw him for a couple of hours once a week for eight weeks in his room at Magdalen College and never got to know him socially, but he played a bigger role in shaping the way I think than any other teacher. He was a brilliant tutor: enthusiastic, sharp and above all

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-89688031152607911022011-11-03T17:18:00.000Z2011-11-03T17:18:42.499Z

The following statement has just been published on the Tribune website: Tribune fights on: co-op structure staves off closure In a last-minute deal to stave off closure in its 75th year, staff, management and the National Union of Journalists have agreed a plan which switches ownership to a co-operative model from next week. The move will allow continuity of publication and a different form

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-50518136150888996122011-10-29T12:04:00.000+01:002011-10-29T12:04:10.526+01:00

Tribune editor Chris McLaughlin has just sent me this: Staff, management and the National Union of Journalists have agreed a last-minute plan to stave off closure of Tribune. At the end of talks ending Friday evening, it was agreed that the title should become a co-operative. Publisher Kevin McGrath has offered to take on historical debts and release the title "debt free" and told the meeting

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-6283721869016911632011-10-27T16:28:00.003+01:002011-12-29T21:21:10.762Z

Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 28 October 2011 On the face of it, now does not seem a particularly appropriate time for Labour to reassert its pro-European credentials. The euro zone is in the throes of a giant crisis that it is only beginning to get under control and could yet end in disaster, and the prospects of Britain joining it any time soon are close to non-existent. Opinion polls show

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-63209734556648483382011-10-27T01:39:00.000+01:002011-10-27T01:39:11.273+01:00

This is what I wrote last time Tribune faced closure in a matter of days, back in 1988. I think the same today. DIG DEEP, DEAR READER, DIG DEEP Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 22 January 1988 Now is the time for all good comrades to come to the aid of Tribune. As things stand, Tribune is set to close after this issue unless we get help, to the tune of £16,000 in total, in the next few days.

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-20328283965159058932011-10-25T17:41:00.003+01:002011-10-25T22:28:53.776+01:00

The following statement will appear in the issue of Tribune to be published this Friday: Tribune is to cease publication in its 75th year. Unless arrangements can be found for new ownership or funding within days the last edition will be next week, 4 November. The decision has been made by Tribune Publications 2009 Ltd after a substantial cash injection failed to raise subscriptions and income

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-39402563919692171862011-09-29T22:35:00.005+01:002012-01-03T01:22:10.538Z

Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 30 September 2011 When was a book last published that was a real game-changer for the left in Britain? The 2004 Liberal Democrat Orange Book, edited by David Laws and Paul Marshall, certainly signalled to anyone who was awake that the up-and-coming Lib Dem generation was ideologically at odds with the social-democratic centre-leftists who had dominated their party

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-50597361115340347292011-09-18T12:24:00.000+01:002011-09-18T12:24:12.203+01:00

Nick Cohen has a blistering piece in the Observer about the impact of Julian Assange's decision to publish unredacted American diplomatic material. The grass or squealer usually blabs because he wants to settle scores or ingratiate himself with the authorities. Assange represents a new breed, which technology has enabled: the nark as show-off.

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-32038462461414775402011-09-16T14:41:00.001+01:002011-09-16T15:22:39.733+01:00

The long-running saga of Johann Hari's dubious journalistic ethics seems to have come to an end of sorts with his public mea culpa in the Independent. He admits that he "improved" his interviews by presenting quotations from his interviewees' writings as words spoken to him; and he admits having used a pseudonym to post vitriolic and untrue Wikipedia entries about his critics and perceived

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-61601289157877124332011-09-15T23:00:00.000+01:002011-09-15T23:00:10.259+01:00

It's Battle of Britain Day, and time to revive this dormant blog. I was only sleeping, honest.

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-71474847878725769622011-08-07T19:44:00.003+01:002011-08-07T19:48:40.764+01:00

Tottenham, 6 August 2011

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-7856149429750819242011-08-05T01:20:00.006+01:002011-12-29T21:23:04.900Z

Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 5 August 2011 It would be difficult to create a more half-arsed political initiative than Blue Labour if you set out to fail. The small group of academics and politicians that was touted earlier this year as the coming big thing in Labour’s intellectual firmament is now officially finished, according to Jonathan Rutherford on the New Statesman's blog,having

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-64922372464349646762011-07-19T09:32:00.001+01:002012-01-03T01:38:09.817Z

Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock put his foot in it on the Today programme this morning when he told John Humphrys that he favoured regulation of the press to ensure political balance in its coverage, along the lines of the rules governing broadcasting in Britain. Such regulation would spell the death of polemical partisan campaigning journalism – and as a former member of the board of Tribune

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-59505745068724109162011-07-15T18:40:00.002+01:002011-10-27T23:36:05.581+01:00

It's all marvellous television – or would be if the BBC's journalists weren't on strike – but the implosion of News Corporation's damage-limitation exercise in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal doesn't really make a lot of difference to anything apart from News Corp's share price. The resignation of Rebekah Brooks, following sharply on the closure of the News of the World and the formal

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-22115560970269243002011-07-14T12:58:00.000+01:002011-07-14T12:58:26.694+01:00

Shadow Welsh secretary Peter Hain wants the Welsh Assembly elected by first-past-the-post rather than the proportional additional member system,. "The only acceptable option given the AV referendum result is to have all AMs elected by first-past-the-post, and we believe that each of the 30 new constituencies should elect two AMs by that system," he says. Hain is generally a good thing, but this

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-63089442944008407782011-07-14T01:45:00.002+01:002011-07-14T23:01:09.521+01:00

The closure of a newspaper is always a sad thing. People lose their jobs and there’s less to buy on the newsstands. But some closures matter more than others. The end of the News of the World has certainly been spectacular, and it undoubtedly matters in the here-and-now of politics. The fall-out from its phone-hacking is immense: we could be looking at statutory regulation of the press within a

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-85072639794493686992011-07-07T18:00:00.007+01:002011-12-29T21:24:27.808Z

Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 8 July 2011 Last week could have been worse for Ed Miliband. Labour won a decisive victory in the Inverclyde by-election – and, after the party’s disastrous performance in May’s Scottish Parliament elections, there had been a real danger that it would lose the seat to the rampant Scottish National Party. But winning Inverclyde was hardly cause for wild Labour

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-12060756062628648952011-07-07T15:10:00.000+01:002011-07-07T15:10:35.734+01:00

Even though it is owned by the evil Rupert Murdoch, the Times has been consistently better as an all-round quality newspaper than the Guardian or the Independent for at least five years. Discuss.

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-78303333904223627602011-07-06T23:12:00.000+01:002011-07-06T23:12:02.218+01:00

Tom Watson MP in the House of Commons this afternoon (from Hansard): News International’s decision to throw Andy Coulson to the wolves last night was an attempt to divert us from an even bigger wrong: that company was systematically, ruthlessly, and without conscience or morality, interfering with the phones of victims of murder, cruelly deceiving their families and impeding the search for

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-24688377381329814652011-06-28T23:30:00.002+01:002011-07-06T11:48:07.618+01:00

The government’s white paper on higher education, unveiled today by David Willetts, contains few surprises. It more-or-less follows the Browne report’s recommendations last year for a university system in which the customer rules supreme. “Student satisfaction” will determine which courses survive and which do not – which in turn will determine which universities survive and which do not. It’s

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-20072363086544235832011-06-22T22:45:00.011+01:002011-09-17T14:45:03.575+01:00

My thoughts on Labour's policy review. Stay Keynseian on economic policy Keep going Ed-Balls-style. Never abandon John Maynard Keynes. We stand for jobs and growth. If we need to tax, we tax the rich  – and if they leave the country, good riddance to parasitic traitorous scum. People first. Go federal on Europe Tell it as it is: we need an EU fiscal policy to sort out the Greek mess. Britain

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-82224300565254176132011-06-20T19:56:00.005+01:002011-07-05T14:32:16.948+01:00

The Economist (on the Greece crisis) sums up what's wrong with the EU right now: Sharing budgetary resources, either through direct transfers or through the issue of “E-bonds” underwritten by the euro area’s taxpayers, is anathema in Germany, where the notion of a “transfer union” in which the better-off subsidise the worse-off is political poison, not least because of the vast transfers from

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-90820471591623374502011-06-09T00:00:00.017+01:002011-12-29T21:25:30.883Z

Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 10 June 2011 When the Tories and Liberal Democrats stitched up their coalition a little more than a year ago, my immediate reaction was that it wouldn’t last. OK, the Tories and the Orange Book Lib Dems shared an ideological commitment to the free market and a smaller state – but too much divided the parties for the coalition to hold in the long run: constitutional

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-85541779900544891402011-06-08T18:58:00.001+01:002011-06-08T19:58:17.917+01:00

It seems that the latest Liam Byrne Labour focus groups show that voters who defected from Labour in 2010 are worried about crime and immigration. I am too. There’s not enough crime around here to create a panic – the odd murder aside – and most of what there is isn’t done by immigrants. Ipswich urgently needs an immigrant crime wave if it is to live up to the expectations of former Labour

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-12324028807003307962011-06-06T17:33:00.004+01:002011-06-07T00:00:37.787+01:00

Chartist, May-June 2011 'You call yourself a libertarian socialist,' said my girlfriend the other day. 'But what does it actually mean in practice?' All right, I'd left some washing-up undone – quite a lot, actually – but I was stumped. 'Er,' I replied hesitantly. 'So I'll do the washing-up when I feel like it?' She laughed, but I was embarassed. Thirty years ago, I'd have had a comprehensive

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-49443339847660890872011-06-01T19:08:00.000+01:002011-06-01T19:08:01.519+01:00

I'm spending this evening uploading lots of my old stuff on to Gauche from 20 years ago and more. Apologies if you get alerts via Facebook and Twitter that are less than topical, but I can't work out how to turn off the feed!

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-36213283937744123162011-06-01T15:07:00.000+01:002011-06-01T15:07:44.703+01:00

Two key moments: 1 Rachel Sylvester in the Times suggesting that the coalition will probably keep going forever. 2 The report showing that young Brits are renting, not buying.

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-19137965813440093412011-05-13T18:09:00.001+01:002011-12-29T21:26:22.427Z

Paul Anderson, Tribune column,  13 May 2011 Last week's defeat for the “yes” campaign in the alternative vote referendum was richly deserved. The “yes” campaign failed miserably to put across its case for changing the electoral system for the House of Commons from first past the post to preferential voting. Its efforts were risible from the start, when its launch was fronted by a comic and an

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-22186450155563338462011-05-07T18:05:00.000+01:002011-05-07T18:05:27.638+01:00

The resounding defeat for the alternative vote in this week's referendum means that Nick Clegg's "miserable little compromise" has been consigned to the dustbin of history (at least for the forseeable future), which is no bad thing. I'm in Barcelona on the Orwell trail with limited internet access right now, so you'll have to wait until next week for my comprehensive response, but I've put up a

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-81356764513200262482011-04-28T00:34:00.009+01:002011-05-03T12:11:34.945+01:00

I hate it. The Sex Pistols got it right in 1977. And here's the tacky public blow-job moment. They really have no shame at all:

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-28377619963648266322011-04-15T17:18:00.002+01:002011-04-24T17:06:28.759+01:00

Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 15 April 2011 There was a time, long ago, when referendums were anathema to us Brits. Referendums were French – and we didn’t do French, at least at home. Referendums had a role in the colonies, but in Britain they had no place. We had a functioning representative democracy that had no need of vulgar plebiscites any more than it needed bidets or garlic. That all

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-60553221456311435602011-04-04T19:21:00.001+01:002011-04-05T02:13:43.606+01:00

I had great fun yesterday at the Oxford Literary Festival at a debate put on by the Orwell Prize on whether George Orwell or Rudyard Kipling was the better or more relevant writer. I was backing Orwell, along with Sarah Bakewell, author of the much acclaimed How to Live - A Life of Montaigne, against the Kiplingites Charles Allen (Kipling Sahib) and Andrew Lycett (Rudyard Kipling and Kipling

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-77275284519356360652011-03-17T00:01:00.002Z2011-04-24T17:00:55.863+01:00

Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 18 March 2011 The week before last, Tribune published a letter from Terry Ashton, one-time general secretary of the London Labour Party, arguing that my last column had not substantiated my claim that the alternative vote is worse than first past the post for parliamentary elections. I know it’s not done for columnists to abuse their privileged position to take

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-11933297766968161332011-03-05T15:14:00.000Z2011-03-05T15:14:23.514Z

Labour's decisive victory in the Barnsley Central by-election is excellent news, if only because it seems to show that (a year too late) the party has got over the worst of the MPs' expenses scandal. The seat was one of Labour's safest, but the cause of the by-election – MP Eric Illsley's conviction for fiddling the taxpayer – might just have made the by-election a tricky one. The Lib Dems' dire

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-91087459551896405842011-02-23T19:33:00.000Z2011-02-23T19:33:33.743Z

Thanks to Hegemony or Bust for alerting me to these:

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-71934770944448467812011-02-22T16:34:00.000Z2011-02-22T16:34:21.891Z

I've only just caught this – an excellent piece from the current Tribune by Paul Hackett of the Smith Institute on Labour's electoral prospects. Read it all, but the points on class and voting patterns are particularly telling: There has been much hand-wringing in Labour circles about the collapse of the C2 vote (skilled manual workers). The figures are horrifying. There has been an 11-

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-22304031813438292022011-02-20T22:56:00.001Z2011-02-20T23:19:58.831Z

I can't be the only old saddo who wonders what might come out of the archives about his generous support of the far-left in Britain.

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-78180117096541283002011-02-17T18:39:00.003Z2011-02-18T13:28:31.430Z

Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 18 February 2011 Something tells me that the campaign in the run-up to the referendum on the voting system on 5 May is going to be rather less than riveting. It’s not just that the issue itself – whether or not to drop the first past the post system for Westminster elections and replace it with the alternative vote – is technical and not at the front of most

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-420374208737684162011-02-09T01:11:00.000Z2011-02-09T01:11:03.406Z

The Guardian's instant book on the biggest news story de nos jours, WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy by David Leigh and Luke Harding, is a great piece of work, and I'll be reviewing it shortly. In the meantime, a gem from Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger's introduction to the book, which I missed the week before last when it was published in the paper: the text of an email he

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-40460538242440157942011-02-04T14:01:00.001Z2011-02-09T00:50:26.042Z

I have set up a new blog AV IS NOT PR, to put the argument for voting "no" in the referendum on the voting system on the grounds that the alternative vote is not proportional representation. Please visit it!

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-13659823918393462312011-01-21T01:20:00.003Z2011-01-27T22:54:12.722Z

Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 21 January 2011 It’s an old adage of political journalism that it’s a mistake to read too much into a single by-election result, and Oldham East and Saddleworth last week is no exception. Indeed, you could argue that it’s not very significant at all. Oldham East and Saddleworth is a very unusual constituency, one of a handful of Labour-Liberal Democrat marginals,

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-21032912484745480342011-01-20T21:12:00.000Z2011-01-20T21:12:12.055Z

The resignation of Alan Johnson as shadow chancellor is a surprise – but then so was his appointment, and he had hardly shone in his role. Ed Balls takes his job, which is good news (he should have been appointed instead of Johnson last October), and Yvette Cooper moves from shadow foreign secretary to shadow home secretary, which also makes sense. I'm not so sure about Douglas Alexander as

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-79521569303295702062011-01-14T11:45:00.001Z2011-01-14T17:48:54.080Z

Labour's victory in the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election was hardly a surprise, though it was more emphatic than I expected. But a few things are worth noting: The result is a reminder that a political party is not always tainted by the shaming of one of its MPs. It's true that Phil Woolas was shamed for over-vigorous attack campaigning rather than fingers-in-the-till – and to my mind was

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-3151739283199450402010-12-31T10:48:00.001Z2010-12-31T11:24:43.051Z

Don't know about you, but I'm in the mood for PiL: Thanks to Madam Miaow for finding this.

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-81618305394863585212010-12-26T19:34:00.009Z2011-01-02T01:12:48.843Z

Socialist Workers' Party ideological chief Alex Callinicos has responded to Laurie Penny on the student movement on the Guardian's Comment is Free website. Surprise, surprise, he argues that Penny's rejection of Leninist "leadership" of the student movement is naive. She hasn't realised, apparently, that students need the power of the working class to achieve their ends. It might or might not be

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-69298452182470588342010-12-23T19:18:00.005Z2010-12-27T00:39:35.662Z

The conviction of Tommy Sheridan for perjury is hardly a surprise to anyone who has followed the former MSP's case since he sued the News of the World for reporting his visits to a swingers' club in Manchester. It was clear from the outset that he had told his former comrades in the Scottish Socialist Party leadership a completely different tale to the one he related in his libel action, and it

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-11197969717075430242010-12-23T02:50:00.006Z2010-12-26T01:08:06.376Z

It’s all gone quiet on the student revolt over the past week – for one simple reason: it’s vacation time, and the kids have gone home to rest. OK, parliament has also approved the tuition fees hike, so the immediate cause for mobilisation ain’t there no more, but that’s a technicality. I’ve no idea whether student protests will spring up again after the holidays: hunch says they will, but it’s

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-13542473732386014002010-12-17T08:34:00.002Z2010-12-25T22:27:49.534Z

Paul Anderson, review of Decline and Fall: Diaries 2005-2010 by Chris Mullin (Profile, £20), Tribune, 17 December 2010 The first volume of Chris Mullin’s diaries, The View From the Foothills, was one of the political publishing highlights of 2009 – a candid, witty and beautifully written account of the author’s life as a junior minister between 1999 and 2005 (with a gap in 2001-03) – and the

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-81373384628602299902010-12-13T21:59:00.001Z2010-12-26T23:08:16.053Z

Last week isn't the first time that useless royals have been caught by the anger of the people while on official business on the streets of London. Back in January 1817,  the then Prince Regent, later George IV, a syphilitic fat alchoholic wastrel, was sitting in his carriage on his way to open parliament when he came under attack from a crowd of London citizens – and the window of his carriage

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-58828580828009210332010-12-04T09:57:00.004Z2010-12-26T23:07:51.730Z

How should Labour councils respond to the coalition government's spending cuts? It would be nice if they could simply refuse to implement them – or, failing that, increase the council tax to compensate for the slashing of central government funding for local government. But, as Don Paskini makes clear here, it's more complicated than that: In recent days, there has been some comradely discussion

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-80552480942889165332010-12-02T10:05:00.002Z2010-12-26T23:07:26.947Z

The alternative to draconian cuts is of course to increase taxation – and according to Prem Sikka in a piece on the Guardian's Comment is Free website here, the bulk of the money required to reduce the deficit could be raised by soaking the super-rich: According to the Sunday Times Rich List, the collective wealth of the 1,000 richest people in the UK rose to £335.5bn in 2010. 53 of the richest

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-41306179986939011662010-11-29T16:00:00.001Z2010-12-26T01:12:37.120Z

Bill Myers of Leicester has this in the current London Review of Books (scroll down from here): Whatever Ross McKibbin may say, opponents of AV are not ‘cave dwellers’ (LRB, 18 November). AV maximises the votes of extremist candidates, since anyone voting for them knows their second preference votes will still count, while the second preference votes of the last candidate to be eliminated have

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-83144619025273856492010-11-28T15:20:00.002Z2010-12-26T01:15:03.408Z

If there is one message that defines the Tory-Lib Dem coalition, it is anti-statism. The Tories and Lib Dems agree that the British state is too big, too interventionist, too centralised, too bureaucratic, too authoritarian, too inefficient. The key task of the current government, they concur, is to set the people free by reducing the size and scope of the state and decentralising what remains

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-49049204272848730632010-11-25T18:39:00.000Z2010-11-25T18:39:51.771Z

Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 26 November 2010 “If Cleopatra’s nose had been shorter,” Pascal famously remarked, “the whole face of the world would have been changed.” His point was that the Egyptian queen was so extraordinarily attractive that she was able easily to seduce first Julius Caesar and then Mark Antony, the two most powerful Romans of her era – and that these liaisons had

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-90153231911459728472010-11-24T00:33:00.004Z2010-12-26T01:16:09.162Z

Jonathan Freedland gets it when it comes to the task facing Ed Miliband: Rather than trying simply to repeat the Blair trick of 1994 – where he declared his intention to scrap the party's commitment to "common ownership of the means of production" – a better focus would be generating a coherent answer to the question of why Labour lost in 2010 and what it would do differently next time

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-31651613929393993332010-11-16T10:42:00.010Z2010-12-26T23:09:04.182Z

I get the horrible feeling that the past fortnight has defined Labour’s response to the coalition government’s cuts programme – and that it is to take the line of least resistance. I’m not talking about the frosty official Labour response to last week’s demonstration against higher education cuts (and fee increases) that ended with student anarchists and others trashing the Tories’ HQ building

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-4200821151939168122010-11-12T20:58:00.000Z2010-11-21T23:55:36.382Z

Paul Anderson, review of Czechoslovakia: The State that Failed by Mary Heimann (Yale, 2009), Tribune, 12 November 2010 Mary Heimann’s history of Czechoslovakia is both a supremely competent and detailed narrative account of the short lives of a central European state (1918-39 and 1945-92) and a brilliant piece of iconoclasm. For most in the west, Czechoslovak history means four things: the

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-41115480266756832602010-11-11T10:39:00.007Z2010-12-26T23:20:52.757Z

D. J. Taylor has a piece on Remembrance Day in the Independent that sums it up perfectly for me.

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-43029900282548631862010-11-06T09:30:00.009Z2011-02-07T08:05:27.460Z

Next year's promised referendum on changing the electoral system for Westminster elections from first-past-the-post to the alternative vote looks set to be an even damper squib than it did a couple of months ago now that Labour has announced that it will be not campaigning for a "yes" vote. The "yes" campaign is likely to comprise only the Liberal Democrats, a smattering of Labour MPs, various

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-27735287852006062242010-10-31T20:56:00.009Z2011-10-28T01:02:18.802+01:00

I have only just discovered that the French political philosopher and activist Claude Lefort died at the beginning of the month at the age of 86. A student of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, whose executor he became, he was briefly a Trotskyist in the mid-1940s but, with Cornelius Castoriadis, broke with Trotskyism in 1948 and founded the review Socialisme ou Barbarie, which over the subsequent 17 years

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-26249752034308427742010-10-31T15:25:00.006Z2010-12-26T01:26:37.825Z

Don Paskini has an excellent post here.

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-72136610173432060522010-10-29T16:34:00.001+01:002010-11-21T21:24:49.016Z

Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 29 October 2010 I can’t be alone in feeling that the immediate response of the Labour leadership to the coalition government’s savage cuts programme has been appallingly lacklustre. All right, no one knew exactly what George Osborne was going to unveil in the comprehensive spending review last week – and, because Labour wasted four months on a leadership

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-74074920402610443132010-10-20T00:09:00.005+01:002010-12-26T01:27:08.778Z

The Quilliam Foundation has been all over the media with its case study of radical Islamists at City University, where I teach. The full report is available here.

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-55961579440421589692010-10-05T15:02:00.005+01:002010-12-26T01:27:46.196Z

The Policy Network think-tank is publishing a 2010 update of Giles Radice's 1992 pamphlet on why Labour lost in the south of England, Southern Discomfort, next week. Details here: should be worth a look.

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-7980868152521131062010-09-30T14:35:00.004+01:002010-12-24T14:41:52.181Z

Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 1 October 2010 Weird Labour Party conferences have been the norm for so long now I've stopped being surprised by them – almost. But this week's has been weirder than any I can remember, even including last year's, when Peter Mandelson was cheered to the rafters after making the campest speech delivered on a public platform in my adult lifetime. Just about

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-88127799394676662072010-09-17T16:12:00.011+01:002010-12-26T23:22:13.635Z

I met the east German artist and opposition activist Bärbel Bohley, who has died aged 65, only once, 25 years ago – but it’s a meeting I shall never forget. I was working for European Nuclear Disarmament Journal, the organ of the neither-Washington-nor-Moscow British peaceniks, at a big conference in west Berlin of east European dissidents and west European anti-nuclear activists, libertarian

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-64322771681128381172010-09-03T15:07:00.000+01:002010-11-21T23:56:46.805Z

Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 3 September 2010 Do you hark back to a previous age? I certainly do. In fact, I hark back to several – and I suspect most people are the same. I had a very happy childhood in the 1960s, and nothing will ever quite recapture the excitement of being a teenager in the 1970s: sex, drugs, rock’n’roll, scorching summers, hitchhiking, Ipswich winning the FA Cup. And then

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-4088116108172595492010-08-31T21:03:00.006+01:002010-11-24T22:38:28.297Z

Labour has just about entered the internet age with its leadership election but the elections for its National Executive Committee are opaque to put it mildly. If you Google "Labour NEC candidates" you get a load of whingeing blogposts about who messed up the left slate, and unless I've missed something there is nothing obvious on the party's official website where you can read candidates'

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-54893743829880735292010-08-18T21:35:00.010+01:002010-12-26T23:20:06.784Z

The death last week of Andrew Roth at the age of 91 marks the end of several eras. After Michael Foot died earlier this year, Roth was the last surviving author of the Left Book Club (his Dilemma in Japan came out in 1946, two years before the demise of the club); and he had for several years been the sole survivor of the small band of American leftists who sought refuge in the UK from the red

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-10992386057443804892010-08-11T19:18:00.008+01:002011-02-07T08:07:07.576Z

An excellent John Sweeney BBC World Service two-parter on intellectuals and politicians who played (or play) the role of "useful idiots" to dictatorial regimes abroad here. George Galloway refused to be interviewed in the second part, apparently because he was scared of Sweeney's temper, but is still made to look foolish. Tony Benn does appear, and it's car-crash radio.

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-44438935562498709252010-08-05T11:05:00.004+01:002010-11-21T21:28:19.242Z

Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 6 August 2010 Whoopee! It’s the holidays. School’s out, parliament’s risen, the interminable Labour leadership hustings are over – and it’s raining. Just what you need to wash away the blues … And, boy, do I need cheering up. A sense of gloom about British politics has been gnawing at me for rather a long time now. I’m not sure exactly when it started, fitfully

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-26295233568062773252010-08-02T13:23:00.007+01:002010-11-24T00:47:44.009Z

Paul Anderson, review of More Work! Less Pay! Rebellion and Repression in Italy 1972-77 by Phil Edwards (Manchester University Press, 2009), Red Pepper, August 2010 Unlike anywhere else in Europe, Italy experienced a “second 1968” during the mid-1970s – an extraordinary wave of student occupations and innovative mass wildcat direct action in its major cities, reaching a climax in 1976-77 and

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-1247560740896681452010-08-01T22:38:00.003+01:002010-12-26T23:18:38.383Z

Joe Haines, Harold Wilson's spin doctor and later Mirror hack, has a go at Peter Mandelson in Tribune: The Third Man is a continuous justification of a serial offender with no convictions, unable to understand why he, one of the “three founding fathers of New Labour,” was badly treated by the other two (Blair and Gordon Brown). Everything was the “three of us” who began the “reforming crusade

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-10692216357992658412010-07-23T01:45:00.009+01:002010-12-26T23:18:08.447Z

The government's proposed question for the referendum on the voting system has been released: Do you want the United Kingdom to adopt the 'alternative vote' system instead of the current 'first past the post' system for electing Members of Parliament to the House of Commons?Put that way, I'll withdraw my plea for supporters of proportional representation to spoil their votes. Just vote no. Trevor

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-9471574511916838542010-07-21T22:26:00.005+01:002010-11-24T22:43:10.429Z

1. It is increasingly clear that the people who will pay for Britain’s economic crisis are those least able to do so and that the Con-Lib coalition’s cuts will do serious damage both to economic recovery and to the fabric of British society. 2. It is just as clear that a vast number of people whose primary source of income is selling their labour power – the proletariat in Marxist jargon,

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-47151336602047786022010-07-13T00:31:00.006+01:002010-12-26T23:23:58.130Z

Gary Younge has an excellent column in the Guardian today about how petty the Gordon-Tony-Peter stuff all is here.

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-3301639109251579542010-07-10T18:26:00.008+01:002010-12-26T23:24:22.151Z

David Miliband's lecture to the comrades in the valleys is worth a look here: I agreed completely with Gordon Brown, when he became prime minister in 2007, that we needed renewal. I supported and voted for him. I agreed that we needed greater moral seriousness and less indifference to the excesses of a celebrity drenched culture. I agreed with him when he said that we needed greater coherence

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-47547054215834000052010-07-08T18:17:00.004+01:002010-11-21T21:30:37.365Z

Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 9 July 2010 It is easy enough to see why Nick Clegg supports introduction of the alternative vote for elections to the House of Commons. All the indications are that it would make it much easier for the Lib Dems to retain the parliamentary seats they currently hold – and they could well need all the help they can get after jumping into bed with a Tory party that

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-82115687351202666622010-07-08T18:14:00.005+01:002010-12-26T23:24:59.946Z

I meant to post a link to Rosie Waterhouse's piece in the Independent last week here but forgot. So here it is.

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-77969282026191174862010-07-06T19:17:00.005+01:002010-12-26T23:25:19.308Z

An excellent piece on the former-RCP spiked crew by Jenny Turner in the London Review of Books here.

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-47716544569101383882010-06-10T00:26:00.002+01:002010-11-21T21:31:49.854Z

Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 11 June 2010 So, as the Clash put it so memorably in one of the stand-out tracks of their London Calling album in 1979: “What are we gonna do now?” Well, to judge by the rhetoric of the contenders in Labour’s so-far somnambulant leadership election campaign, not a lot different from what we did between 1994 and 2010, but without Tony Blair or Gordon Brown. Not

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-24689591264844718092010-06-06T11:34:00.005+01:002010-12-26T23:26:07.108Z

David Taylor in today's Independent on Sunday here: There must be a decent percentage of the population whose ideal Culture Secretary would be a man (or woman) who revealed that he never watched commercial television, demanded to know why BBC4 was so negligibly funded, declared that tabloid newspapers were vulgar, and wondered why BBC2 had to waste so much public money on gardening programmes and

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-21740905955399628792010-05-13T17:42:00.001+01:002010-12-24T14:48:22.779Z

Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 14 May 2010 Quite understandably, most political commentary on the general election has focused on the extraordinary aftermath – Gordon Brown’s decision to stay in Number 10 Downing Street, David Cameron negotiating terms for coalition with Nick Clegg, Brown’s resignation – but I’m not going to deal with any of that here. I'm filing before it has all been sorted

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5094806.post-32023564781239385952010-05-10T22:34:00.005+01:002010-11-24T22:27:28.521Z

I've had enough of idiotic Tories and BBC hacks talking bollocks about "unelected prime ministers". We've got a parliamentary system. Some basic facts about British prime ministers: Balfour 1902, Asquith 1908, Lloyd George 1916, Bonar Law 1922, Baldwin 1923 and 1935, Chamberlain 1937, Churchill 1940, Eden 1955, Macmillan 1957, Douglas Home 1963, Callaghan 1976, Major 1990, Brown 2007 ... all

Paul Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03671836029938158273noreply@blogger.com0