Posts Tagged ‘Parliament’

David Cameron flunks his final test

13/09/2016, 07:43:37 AM

by Atul Hatwal

Twenty years. That’s what it will take for David Cameron’s name to be anything other than a byword for political failure. In the 2030s a new generation of Conservative politicians, untainted by the assumptions of their political forbears will rediscover David Cameron like some long lost Beatles recording.

I recall the process well from the mid-1990s when many of us working for the Labour party unearthed our own Rare Groove classics: Jim Callaghan and Harold Wilson.

When nostalgia and retro-chic return Cameron to relevance he will be 69.

Just three years older than the current leader of the Labour party, one year older than Hillary Clinton, most likely the next President of the United States and one year younger than Donald Trump, god forbid, the next President of the United States.

Instead of ascending to the highest office in his profession, based on a life of experience, David Cameron’s most productive working years will be spent trailing around the world engaged in lucrative but transitory and ultimately hollow pursuits.

He branded himself the heir to Blair a decade ago and as he travels through his fifties and sixties, David Cameron will truly take-up this mantle.

(more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon

Posted in Uncut | 7 Comments »

Benn and Thatcher will be remembered long after their colourless contemporaries

15/03/2014, 08:00:56 AM

by Kevin Meagher

Passing away at eighty-eight years of age represents a good innings in anyone’s book. Indeed, it’s a score the late Tony Benn also shares with Margaret Thatcher, which may, on the face of it, seem a provocative comparison.

After all, the two of them were on opposite sides of every major issue of the 1980s: the miners’ strike, nuclear disarmament, Ireland, South Africa, monetarism. But their personalities and approaches to politics were strikingly similar.

They were both driven, uncompromising characters; self-confident in what they said and thought. Equally, they were divisive, impulsive and reckless figures. Yes, they stuck to their guns, but often long after it was sensible to do so.

Both believed in the sovereignty of Parliament. Both were instinctively Eurosceptic. And both were adored by the radical sections of their parties, to the cold fury of the pragmatists.

On a personal level, Benn, like Thatcher, enjoyed a happy marriage and both were noted for the small personal kindnesses that so many other leading politicians are seemingly incapable of offering. Likewise, they exuded that other-worldy quality that surely served to insulate them from the brickbats that were thrown at both of them for so long.

(more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon

Posted in Uncut | 3 Comments »

Parliament is still the family’s enemy

03/01/2011, 07:00:18 AM

by John Woodcock

My new year’s resolution is to be a good dad to my two-year-old daughter.

Readers of a zingy political website understandably might ask why this should be of any interest to them. Bear with me.

The resolution, and my decision to share it, is driven by an issue I had not properly considered before becoming a Member of Parliament: namely, the difficult relationship between family life and elected politics in Britain.

It is not that I think I have been a rubbish dad so far, though the explosion of fury from my daughter when she is denied a second slice of chocolate cake would make any parent doubt himself.

But since being elected last May it has been unexpectedly difficult to balance the schedule of Parliamentary life with giving the time and energy that a loving little girl deserves and a partner sharing parenting duties should have the right to expect. The life of an MP is not an obvious case study for the good parenting handbook: shuttling up and down the country every week; late votes and meetings that can snatch away even the promise of a call back home before bedtime; events and campaigning that you want to get stuck into when you are back home in your constituency rather than spend the weekend at the zoo. (more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon

Posted in Uncut | 3 Comments »

PMQs is no playground. Parliament matters.

26/10/2010, 09:50:47 AM

by Dan Hodges

Does the House of Commons matter? Not the institution per se. Temple of democracy or den of inequity? On that you pays your money, or Stephen Byers’ cab fare, and takes your choice.

The chamber itself. Amphitheatre. Cockpit. Arena of the absurd.

There is a fashionable perception that Parliament, in all its forms, is now an irrelevance. Purists bemoan the callow tenor of its discourse. Modernists its arcane, anachronistic traditions. The right sees a shell, gutted by the faceless bureaucrats of Brussels. The left an inflexible monument to establishment orthodoxy.

In a way, all are right. And all wrong. What happens in the Commons chamber changes nothing. But it influences everything.

Take last week’s CSR. One of the more widely covered political showpieces of recent years. Wall to wall live coverage on the TV news channels. Six, seven, eight pages cleared in the national broadsheets. Not a Chilean miner in sight. (more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon

Posted in Uncut | 2 Comments »