Did the BBC conspire to make Boris look better on TV? No. November 15, 2019 During my Masters degree in journalism I spent some time working for the BBC’s Daily Politics, now known as Politics Live. The show was produced and broadcast from the BBC’s Westminster studios in Millbank, and every day it was all hands on deck as a team of editors, producers, guest-bookers, script writers, presenters and technical [...]
Lagarde’s challenges start close to home November 15, 2019 When things get heated at work it’s only a matter of time before someone proposes an “off site.” Getting away from the office and taking in new surroundings can work wonders for morale and facilitate fresh thinking. It was in this spirit that the new head of the European Central Bank (ECB), Christine Lagarde, whisked [...]
Tories deserve to win the economic battle November 14, 2019 The Conservatives have taken a fair bit of stick for their claim that “the cost of Corbyn” would come in at £1.2 trillion. Independent fact-checkers have dismissed the methodology and pointed out that it’s difficult for the Tories to cost Labour’s manifesto commitments when the manifesto hasn’t been published. Still, the £1.2 trillion figure isn’t [...]
Tories must shake up their campaign to pull the votes in November 7, 2019 Having allowed the other parties a few days to warm up, the Conservatives last night officially joined the fray as Boris Johnson launched the Tory election campaign at a rally of the party faithful in Birmingham. He was on vintage form, likening our blocked parliament to an anaconda struggling to digest a tapir and lambasting [...]
Chinese interference has no place in the City November 6, 2019 On Monday night MPs elected from among themselves a new Speaker of the House of Commons. Labour’s Lindsay Hoyle prevailed, but all candidates spoke about the vital importance and sanctity of our democratic system of government. That democracy will now burst into life in the form of a General Election campaign which formally gets underway [...]
Labour’s election campaign rides on shameful NHS scaremongering November 4, 2019 Labour’s campaign will be wildly populist, gambling on the theory that voters are ready for a radical alternative. To make their case, promises of free education, free social care, higher pay, lower rent and better services will be offered alongside a dystopian vision of Tory Britain under Boris Johnson. Read more: Corbyn brands government’s fracking [...]
Corbyn leads his troops into a vicious class war November 1, 2019 Running an election campaign on the basis of a question is a risky business. Ted Heath found this out after the 1974 election during which he’d asked the voters: “Who runs Britain?” The response was clear: “Not you.” Yesterday, Jeremy Corbyn launched his own pitch for Number 10 with a rather more divisive, even sinister, inquiry: “Whose [...]
The real question is: socialism, yes or no? October 30, 2019 Three and a half years after the Brexit referendum and two and a half years since the last General Election, voters will be invited back to the polling booths on 12 December to shake the parliamentary snow globe once again. An election isn’t required by law until May 2022 — imagine that — but the [...]
This will be much more than a Brexit election October 28, 2019 Labour is on the back foot. In recent weeks it has played an entirely defensive game — denying Boris Johnson his preferred EU exit date and further denying him a General Election on his terms. With each of these blocking moves, Labour backs closer into the corner, seemingly devoid of a strategy beyond frustrating a [...]
Wework’s fall back down to Earth was a long time coming October 25, 2019 Sometimes only a bold and radical move can pull a company out of a hole, and by the standard of Wework, plans don’t get more radical than the ones announced by the company’s new chairman Marcelo Claure. One can almost imagine the gasps as he informed staff that from now on, the business will “prioritise [...]
