This year sees the 50th anniversary of the referendum to leave or remain in the Common Market, as the EU was then called, and which the UK had joined two years earlier. The referendum was Labour Prime Minister’s Harold Wilson’s gambit to overcome the party’s deep divisions on Europe and
I joined the Royal Air Force in the final decade of the Cold War. At that time, we lived under the omnipresent threat of war, with the UK Armed Forces postured in Germany to repel the Soviet hordes. However, NATO prevailed, the dark clouds of imminent conflict dissipated, and the
In 1989, the Labour Government in New Zealand transformed the way decisions were made about children and young people who were victims of abuse and neglect. Today, New Zealand has one of the lowest rates of children in care and more children living safely within their family. UK Labour’s landmark
The Georgian republic stands at a crossroads. It will either resume its path towards a liberal, democratic and independent state – or, like Belarus, it will become a client state of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Which course it follows depends upon the hundreds of thousands of Georgian citizens demonstrating every day
I do not envy Rachel Reeves or any other senior UK government figure tasked with negotiating our future trade deals. Economic growth is the centrepiece of the government’s manifesto and Reeves sees the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the EU and the US as the key players with whom increasing
It is relatively easy to dismiss Elon Musk’s increasingly bizarre and frenetic tweeting as the work of one ill-informed and ignorant individual, with a bit too much free time. Afterall, that is what X is now mostly for – the spreading of half-witted nonsense by lazy, credulous, and conspiracy-minded simpletons.
Slaves of Roman emperors reminded them they were mortal with the words “look behind you.” I sometimes think that each CLP should elect an Officer for Devil’s Advocacy. Their wise words could be “look around you.” We can see that the lamps of the Left are going out all over
Farage image attributable to Gage Skidmore, Musk to TED. Licences respectively, Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic & Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic Over the past few weeks it has been reported that Elon Musk, not content with having purchased one election, is intent on replicating this feat in the UK. In addition to his
Something unusual happened to British people in Baku in November 2024 when asked where they were from. After years of being a little embarrassed by their country, for once, attendees of COP29 from the United Kingdom could feel some pride in answering that question. The UK that had just raised
The Government recently began work to co-create a new Civil Society Covenant, aiming to reset the relationship between government and charities. This has the potential to reshape how charities work with Government to achieve their five Missions. The last reset like this was David Cameron’s Big Society. Big Society promised
