Jeremy Corbyn has always insisted that Labour policy be decided by consultation and debate. With the leaking of a draft of the party’s manifesto, Labour has launched its most ambitious act of policy crowdsourcing. As a pundit pointed out, leaking the manifesto is probably the surest way of getting the media to seriously read it….
If you’re looking for a good word of the day, try apanthropinization. It means to rise above or resign from one’s narrow concerns and worldly worries. Over the next six weeks of what looks set to be a dreary election campaign we will all be needing some of that. We’ve moaned about the lack of…
The comedy is that David Cameron believed his own lie. The tragedy is, so did the rest of us. The Conservative victory at last year’s election sent shockwaves through the media and political establishments. When the dust had settled and the pollsters had been pilloried, it was all so obvious why the Tories had won-…
Pondering the 1980s Stewart Lee observed that culture itself seemed to hate Thatcher. Musicians hated Thatcher. Comedians hated Thatcher. Writers hated Thatcher. There were even aliens from the future in 2000AD comic strips who hated Thatcher. And yet she still managed to get elected. Three times. On May 8th the left were again confronted by…
New media commentators have decreed that the age of the personal PR minder is dead. “Long live Twitter” is their clarion call. It’s the new communication tool for folk in the public eye. Openness and willingness to feed the twitter cycle offers an opportunity to unveil the ‘real you’; to be judged as well as…
Most people in the country are worrying about the leadership of the country under the new coalition, and their concerns for the nation run to a number of issues, from what will happen with capital gains tax, what will happen with inheritance tax, will there or won’t there be cuts in public services, will the…
I went to supper at the small but deliciously formed Texture restaurant in Portman Street last night with our clients, the government of South Australia, hosted by the Agent General, Bill Muirhead, to celebrate the First Family of Australian wine production. I sat next to Robert Hill Smith, who runs the Yalumba winery. Yalumba is…
Most people in the country are worrying about the leadership of the country under the new coalition, and their concerns for the nation run to a number of issues, from what will happen with capital gains tax, what will happen with inheritance tax, will there or won’t there be cuts in public services, will the…
The failure of anyone to take meaningful control of the country in the wake of the General Election says a great deal about the hype that the media work up as a cappuccino froth of sound bites. It felt like going to a bad movie – the trailer was exceptional but the movie itself is…
Finagle’s Law of Dynamic Negatives states that ‘anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment!’. From now on, I suspect, any political instance of this law in action will be known as the ‘Brown Variant’, after unguarded remarks about a woman he had just spoken to on a walkabout were broadcast to the…