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….
Gallons of intellect, insight and idiocy are poured into election campaigns- all in search of a magic slogan that will catapult a candidate to victory. The amount of money sloshing around in the election market reflects the mythology that has been built around the campaign guru. The power of a phrase to win is often…
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…
Jeremy Corbyn goes from clinging on to gripping the Labour party by the neck. Forget the Revenant this year’s great survival story belongs to the softly spoken radical for Islington North. A year in to the experiment, and two successful leadership contests later, we know any attempt to school the ragged trousered socialist in the ways…
This month marks the last time a brand new VCR will roll off the conveyor belt of Funai Electric in Japan. It is 12 years since most major shops in the UK and Europe stopped selling VCRs, relegating their bulky tapes to ever-decreasing shelf space at the back of charity shops. Someone, somewhere was still…
“Lost for words”. This was how so many of us reacted to the senseless, brutal murder to MP Jo Cox. After a frenzied week of last ditch campaigning for the upcoming referendum the tragic event in Birstall has catapulted everything into miserable perspective. Only on Wednesday the Dumbish Armada was descending down the Thames. Even…
To paraphrase one Vladimir Ilyich, the more something is said the more it becomes so. This is the essence of spin. A few weeks ago it was all about David Cameron’s family finances. He tried to dodge hard answers until it dawned on Carlton’s ex-PR chief that denials and prevarications were only fuelling the story….
Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. This is how shadow chancellor John McDonnell’s whipping out of Mao’s Little Red Book went down in the Commons yesterday. Critics, on both sides of the house, have lambasted the former backbench romper stomper for quoting from a genocidal dictator. McDonnell argues this “flamboyant gesture” was required to…
She is considered the most influential female rapper of all time. He is has less sheen than a dog-eared copy of The Ragged Trouser Philanthropists. But it turns out that Nicki Minaj and the Labour leader hopeful Jeremy Corbyn have one thing in common. Both have shown this week that twitter thrives on good old…
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…