It is hard to look at world events today and feel hopeful. Russia’s war against Ukraine and the Hamas orgy of violence on October 7th (again) bring to mind Irish poet WB Yeats’ words from 1919’s The Second Coming: Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed
Barnet, where I am a councillor, is one of the most diverse boroughs in the country, including being home to the largest number of Jewish people of any local authority in the country . On 7th October when the horrific terrorist incursion into Israel by Hamas occurred, we were braced
Rishi Sunak wants to put the UK on the world stage with his AI Summit this week, but there remains a crucial missing ingredient from the government’s script: workers. And it is not a new omission. The government has chosen to make the summit about existential risks and global standards.
Ignoring the hype about Elon Musk’s attendance, this week’s AI safety summit is serious business. It marks the first significant diplomatic interventions on AI, and therefore is likely to frame globally how the world’s governments might respond to this technology. There have been some welcome but tentative government interventions so
“The debate about how we get to Net Zero has thrown up a range of worrying proposals and today I want to confirm that under this government, they’ll never happen.” Rishi Sunak’s speech in September marked a break from over a decade of political consensus on the importance of Net
Peter Kyle MP, the man who masterminded Labour’s breathtaking win in Mid-Beds, has called the result ‘a political earthquake’. But he’s wrong. It’s much bigger than that. An earthquake may shake the walls, knock over a few vases, and take down some buildings. The results from Mid-Bedfordshire and Tamworth are
Devastating and fast-moving events in Israel and the Gaza Strip – including a catastrophic explosion at a Gaza hospital on 17 October caused it seems by an errant Palestinian rocket – will leave many observers reeling and desperate. Yet we must try to assess why this conflict has erupted now,
Today is my final day as director of Progressive Britain and, coming just days after this year’s Labour Party Conference, it provides an opportunity to reflect. Our strapline since we rebranded in 2021 has been Imaginative Thinking to Rebuild Labour and the Nation. Its more that just a line though,
Not a lot of people know this, but Labour organised a special one day conference on Socialist Foreign Policy in 1986. It was part of Neil Kinnock’s efforts to encourage new thinking on issues that obsessed many members. Kinnock’s Labour was then gradually shifting its position from unilaterally banning the
As the Tories implode into a farrago of populist nastiness and broken promises, with Liz Truss as their spirit guide, attention turns to whether Labour is ready to govern. Labour’s conference in Liverpool is the last one before the voters make up their minds about whether they trust us or
