PMQs verdict: Parliament can do better than this – and it must
What kind of country are we living in, if our parliamentarians can’t treat each other with basic decency? I’m not, for once, complaining about the boorish jeering that washes down from the green benches each Wednesday. Although it’s a largely counterproductive practice, it’s not explicitly rude. Yet rudeness was the order of the day this lunchtime. Barely one female MP was able to get through their question to the PM before the chattering of their fellow MPs began to reach [...]
View Original Article on labourlist.org
Shared by 2 people
More from this website
A genuinely radical Labour Party would adore the state far less (labourlist.org)
Judging by the broad, if sometimes shaky, support Ed Miliband enjoys from the Labour left, there is a general acceptance now that the Party has moved some clicks along the political spectrum towards socialism. In fact, Labour is seized by what might be...
What Labour should do about honours (labourlist.org)
The publication of the 2013 New Year’s Honours List should remind us of the unsatisfactory character of the honours industry. It’s time to consider what the next Labour government could usefully do about it. The latest list issued by the Cabinet Offic...
An affront to democracy, and to transparency (labourlist.org)
Prince Charles is a lobbyist. He has the right to lobby ministers, as do you or I. The issue is whether this lobbying should be secret or not. A panel of judges decided that the Prince’s letters should be covered under the Freedom of Information Act, ...
Mitchell must resign, say Tory voters (labourlist.org)
In a Survation poll for the Mail on Sunday, 2010 Tory voters were asked if Mitchell should stay or go over his “F**king plebs” attack on police. The results aren’t good for the Chief Whip: Will Cameron cling on to someone who is so obviously a liabili...
Do we have to be so macho? (labourlist.org)
This will be a hard piece to write well, I am sure by the end of it I will not be entirely happy with all the contents, but I think it’s worth trying. Part of the reason I suspect I will fail is that I am conflicted about assigning gender to some of th...
Sod tactics, Labour. Vote with your principles (labourlist.org)
I’ve always been an idealist. Or a “naive idealist” as tradition dictates my kind must be referred. I’ve always believed that there are ideals to be aimed for and nice thick lines which must never be crossed. And yet in the cruel and all too human worl...
The left’s choice (labourlist.org)
George Papandreou’s victory was spectacular. Facing the failed New Democracy Government under Kostas Karamanlis, a party that in just a few years had run out of competence, ideas and steam, PASOK secured a landslide in the 2009 legislative elections. T...
Institutionalised fixing: the Labour way (labourlist.org)
“Let’s overturn these tables Disconnect these cables This place don’t make sense to me no more Can you tell me what we’re waiting for, señor?” Bob Dylan was probably not referring to the Labour Party’s ingrained culture of fixing in these lines. But hi...
It’s time for Labour to take back the Republican cause (labourlist.org)
In 1894 Keir Hardie, leader of the Independent Labour Party, wrote: “the life of one Welsh miner is of greater commercial and moral value to the British nation than the whole Royal crowd put together, from the Royal Great-Grand- Mama to this puling Roy...
When it comes to fixing – is the Labour Party ready to stop taking the piss? (labourlist.org)
For too long in the Labour Party there has been an acquiescence (if not complicity) in the fixing culture that pervades the party. That acquiescence was practised by those at the top of the party as much as anyone. And yet, with the power to change the...

