If last week was about first-day-at-school selfies, and for some, red boxes, then this week is about the hard yards of change. The thrill of a new government is fleeting, and soon people want to see what difference their votes will make. Making a difference is hard. The Tories may
Labour’s plans to end the use of hotel accommodation for some of the 104,517 individuals currently in receipt of asylum support, and the addition of 1,000 extra caseworkers to reduce the backlog, have been welcomed by many charities and groups supporting asylum seekers. From my experience working for a charity
Now that the dust has settled a little and the adrenaline has worn off, it’s worth thinking a bit deeper about the election results from Thursday. Labour has a majority, a large majority – one that gives it the mandate to make the change that is desperately needed. That this
Wow! What a difference a day makes. My brain is buzzing with what these election results means for our country, for the future of UK politics, and for how our new Labour Government will need to govern. Everything feels different. Politics has never felt more fragile. The voter coalition that
“We are living in a more dangerous, volatile world. Our adversaries openly challenge the values we cherish. Freedom, sovereignty, the rule of law – and of course the open international order upon which so much depends”, wrote Lord David Cameron recently in an open letter to The Telegraph (9 June
Six weeks ago, when I spoke at the Progressive Britain conference on ‘is Labour serious about class’? and blogged that, yes, I thought they were, none of us had any idea that a General Election would come so soon. We’re now just two weeks from a potentially historic polling day,
The proposal for a new model of national service fundamentally misunderstands the nature of modern warfare and the most pressing needs of our national defence. It conflates two distinct concepts: the requirements of our military and the benefits of community service, meeting the urgent needs of neither, it fails to
To paraphrase Trotsky, you may not be interested in foreign policy, but foreign policy is interested in you. National security will be an issue in the general election but thankfully Corbyn’s ambiguities have been muscled out by a tough-minded Labour approach including securonomics. We live in an age of crisis,
The Prime Minister was right to set out the challenges of AI in terms of the progress technology could deliver. There are incredible opportunities for human ingenuity to combine with the best of new technologies to transform our economy and society. Accelerating developments in AI and related digital technologies could
The Tory Government talks about wanting to tackle violence against women and girls – while presiding over a system crippled by underfunding, which in most cases cannot bring perpetrators to justice. As with many aspects of our public realm, the Tories talk tough and deliver precious little. Much has been
