When Boris Johnson was Prime Minister, he made “Levelling Up” one of his big political priorities. During the 2019 General Election campaign, we heard a lot about Levelling Up, which was essentially Johnson’s pledge to revive the large parts of England that lag behind London and the southeast for economic
In 1991 a largely neglected intervention in Iraq prevented genocide and boosted freedom. That year up to two million Iraqi Kurds had fled to the freezing mountains and their deaths and suffering filled our television screens. They understandably feared a repeat of Saddam Hussein’s genocide with chemical weapons in the
There is no suggestion whatsoever that Nadhim Zahawi, Cabinet minister and Chairman of the Conservative Party, has broken the law. His fiercest detractors are not calling him criminal, and his loudest defenders, a dwindling band, point out that tax avoidance is not tax evasion. So, what’s the fuss? There’s a
How the Tory Government is failing young people from poorer backgrounds and in places where apprenticeships matter most The conservative government reformed the apprenticeship system in 2017. They introduced new Apprenticeship Standards and reformed the funding formula known as the Apprenticeship Levy. The levy is paid by employers and then stored in
Electoral reform for a House of Lords replacement is the long-term prize that a future Labour government should seize as soon as it enters office. Proportional representation ensures that we have an equal say in how we our governed and, what is crucially missed, also leads to less poverty and
New Labour is older than me – it’s more than a quarter of a century old – so how much is still relevant in 2022? Focussing on the economic policies of the 1997 manifesto, I argue a lot is still relevant for today. Labour’s contract with the British people for
The 43 year old Iranian regime’s lethal rampages round its neighbourhood have increased of late and reek of desperation. It has, for instance, again bombed exiled Iranian Kurdish camps in Iraqi Kurdistan. It destroyed the house – comically described as an Israeli drone base – of a Kurdish company chief,
Britain isn’t working. That is the inciting claim of Labour shadow levelling up secretary Lisa Nandy’s new book, All In: How We Build a Country That Works. In the ensuing 200 pages, Nandy lays out a litany of public policy failures that have afflicted the UK in the Thatcher and
Childcare in this country is broken. The UK has the second most expensive childcare costs in the world. The average cost of a full-time nursery place for a 2-year old is just under £14,000 a year, for two-thirds of families this equals the costs of mortgage fees or rent. Childcare
This November marks the one hundred years since the Labour Party became the official opposition to the Tories for the first time. The 1922 general election delivered 142 Labour MPs, as the Liberals split into two, never to form a government again. I’ve written a longer essay on it here. JR
