Monthly Archives: December 2019

It looks like something out of Dominic Cummings’s playbook; though it’s a pretty obvious idea, and is probably in The Prince too. Get all your most outrageous actions in at the very beginning of your reign, so that they’ll be less … Continue reading →

Isn’t this demented? It’s the speech he was giving when he heard about the result of the impeachment vote in the House of Representatives. I imagine that the editing makes it look worse – this is just 15 minutes of … Continue reading →

Could Corbyn, or a Corbynist political programme, ever have won against the forces that were arrayed against them? They had a lot going for them: an enthusiastic political base, especially among the young and (marginally) among women; a popular manifesto, … Continue reading →

Labour’s main tactical error – among many lesser ones, I’m sure, like most of the other parties’, except perhaps the SNP – was to agree to a general election before  Brexit had been settled; either by voting Johnson’s ‘deal’ through … Continue reading →

Labour’s manifesto was broadly popular. More than that, I felt it was absolutely necessary in order to rescue the country from the neoliberal pit into which it has fallen. It was also practical, ‘costed’, and not all at all ‘extreme’ … Continue reading →

One of the ‘victors’ I left out of my post a couple of days ago (https://bernardjporter.com/2019/12/13/the-victors/) is that section of the British Jewish community that purported to regard Jeremy Corbyn as an existential threat to them; which was one of … Continue reading →

Katherine Viner, editor of the Guardian, tells us that when she woke up yesterday morning, she felt that Britain was ‘a different place’. It was the same for many of us. The country had suddenly flipped over to a condition … Continue reading →

Of course it’s a great victory for Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings, and for the spirit of Machiavelli hovering over their heads. It’s also a triumph for our Right-wing press, perhaps the least ‘free’ and fair in Europe; and for … Continue reading →

On my way to vote this morning I was buoyed by all the Labour posters in the windows of our professional middle-class inner suburb. The only non-Labour one was a solitary Green. (Bless their hearts!) But of course I’m worried … Continue reading →

Back in Blighty, and back to serious blogging soon. And aren’t these serious times? In the meanwhile I’m posting here a review of mine that has just been published in the Literary Review. Or, rather, my original version of it; … Continue reading →