News & Insight

29 September 2012

Last week I wrote about conference, and continued to ask what conference is for. So I thought I’d build on the three ideas I threw out at the end of the piece that I think might make conference work better...

28 September 2012

And so it begins. After an odyssey of Homeric proportions through the UK legal system, the coalition's Godzilla style rampage though England's green and pleasant land continues with a new enemy: the badger. This cull is a jackhammer blow to biodiversity...

28 September 2012

Traditionally, the left has been reticent about engaging with national identity. Patriotism has often been seen by social democrats as inimical to progressive politics; an emotional sentiment which is the natural preserve of the right. This has to change, and indeed...

28 September 2012

Frustrated, powerless and ignored: the top three words people associate with their experiences of public services. This despite record levels of investment under Labour and 13 years in which public service reform was repeated as a mantra. Whilst the culture of...

28 September 2012

Over recent years parliament has become dominated by a political class, the dominance of which has helped to put people off politics. They see Westminster as being divorced from real life, and they believe – often correctly – that the...

28 September 2012

Ed Miliband should resist calls to announce policy at this year’s Labour party conference. There is always a lot of pressure on the leader’s speech at any party conference. Competing priorities are forcefully prescribed, some calling for more detailed policy commitments,...