News & Insight

9 May 2016

After a dull campaign, the results of the Scottish election surprised. The SNP consolidated the referendum ‘yes’ voters into party supporters, but lost their overall majority in the Scottish parliament. So another referendum on independence is off the agenda for...

6 May 2016

First published in December 2013. One of my earliest memories is sitting at the front of the top deck of the 44 bus with my brother Tariq as it wound its way from Tooting in South London, to Battersea and across the Thames....

4 May 2016

The Conservatives understand – and exploit – the electorate’s concerns about ‘place’ As I argue in my forthcoming book Austerity Politics and UK Economic Policy, if austerity were simply an argument about the merits of deficit reduction, its critics on the left...

3 May 2016

Although one would hardly know it from the media obsession with the June EU referendum, several major elections are occurring in May 2016. One of those will be the fifth such contest for the Welsh Assembly. With new powers given...

3 May 2016

A priority for the Labour party should be the transformation of the localist agenda that has assumed pride of place in the government’s plans for devolution in England. Concentrated heavily on metropolitan areas—‘city-regions’—particularly in the north of England, this agenda lacks...

28 April 2016

When the Labour Representation Committee was formed by the Fabians, the trade unions and others in 1900, it set out to use democratic politics to tackle the inequalities thrown up by the industrial age. Exploitation and social decay were exploding...