The more I look at it the more I think that the only real difference between New Labour and the Conservatives is that Labour has a decidedly masochistic streak ( Read more... )

Daniel over at Crooked Timber has a very good update on his Blair lame duck model which sought to predict the date of Blair's departure based on an analysis of the relative value of grovelling to Blair and Brown. Amusing and frighteningly true.

At first glance it might seem odd to compare such apparently mortal enemies as Trotskyists and New Labour but I want to argue that they have a great deal in common and that what they have in common has much to say about the essential impotency of the left ( Read more... )

I guess there was another thread I missed out of my critique of Charles Clarke and the New Authoritarianism and that's just how hubristic it is. Not only are we expected to believe that our leaders (now and forever) are well intentioned but also that they are virtually infallible. They could never, for instance, harass (in Blair's chilling phrase ( Read more... )

Charles Clarke's contribution to today's Guardian is very interesting. On the one hand it's an uncommonly open presentation of the the "New Authoritarianism", on the other it's a series of very obvious and clumsy rhetorical devices ( Read more... )

Monkey arrested! Organ grinder no doubt laughs his ass off.