News & Insight

14 June 2016

It’s easy to forget or ignore the fact that Labour wasn’t always pro-EU. From Gaitskell’s 1000 years of history and Benn’s five questions of democracy to Castle’s Oxford Union speech: left and right have had their sceptics. Had Benn lived...

10 June 2016

However the vote turns out, the referendum on Britain's EU membership on 23 June represents a triumph for Ukip. The issue the party was founded to address - Britain's membership of the EU - is being put before the whole...

8 June 2016

“If there is a collective identity society is a home. If you have multiculturalism, society is a hotel,” Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks told Newsnight last week, echoing remarks he has been making for years. The centre-left has long regarded it...

7 June 2016

Labour supporters of English devolution currently face a dilemma which can only be resolved by a nationwide citizens' convention. Do they embrace the offer from the Conservative government for devolution to individual and combined local authorities, while recognising all its...

6 June 2016

Earlier this year, during one of my regular door knocks, I called at a house and the door was opened by an elderly woman in her late 70s. She was dishevelled, distressed and clearly confused. She had an empty bubble...

3 June 2016

From backbenches to Brussels and back again When the Commons Environmental Audit Committee rightly concluded that “the UK’s membership of the EU has been a crucial factor in the shaping of its environmental policy”, there was something of a backlash. How can...