By BAGEHOT JEREMY CORBYN opened his overdue anti-Brexit speech this morning by observing that the venue, Senate House in London, was the inspiration for the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s 1984. The comment—playfully questioning the sincerity of the arguments to follow—will have unsettled the pro-Europeans who dominate his Labour Party. For Mr Corbyn seems only…
By BAGEHOT PART of the art of politics is crisis management: making embarrassments and other disadvantageous stories go away. But over the past week, David Cameron—whose antennae often seem as sharp as the best of them—has somehow managed to do the opposite. He has turned a pedestrian story about his personal finances into a rolling…
By BAGEHOT MY COLUMN this week looks at the Remain campaign in Britain’s EU referendum. The main organisation in it is Britain Stronger in Europe, an umbrella organisation encompassing pro-Europeans from across the political spectrum and different fields of public life. It is led by Will Straw, with whom I recently spent a day on…
By BAGEHOT PUBLISHED by YouGov yesterday, the above map caught my eye. Using a 80,000-strong panel of voters, the pollsters have ranked 188 of the 206 local authority areas in England, Scotland and Wales by their propensity to vote for Brexit at the referendum on June 23rd. The result neatly illustrates the argument of my…
By BAGEHOT THE official declaration has not yet taken place, but already it is arithmetically certain that Sadiq Khan has won London’s election and will be the capital’s new mayor. With over 90% of ballots counted he leads Zac Goldsmith, his Tory rival, by 44% to 35%. The decisiveness of his victory is easy enough…
By Bagehot YESTERDAY Theo Bertram, an adviser in Downing Street under New Labour, blogged on the art of spinning local-election results. He pointed to the party’s grim showing in 2007, when it lost 505 seats and the opposition Conservatives gained 911, as proof of the wonders that successfully setting expectations and framing results can work….
By BAGEHOT / J.A. A guest-post from one of my predecessors as Bagehot: WHEN, two years ago, the bones of Richard III, a crippled Medieval monarch, were dug up from a car park in Leicester on the basis of the sketchiest of archaeological hunches, the locals rejoiced. Not many knew much about the 15th-century tyrant…
By BAGEHOT / A.M. A guest-post from one of my predecessors as Bagehot: THE borders between criticism of Israel, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are, like Israel’s borders, disputed. Some people believe that denying Israel’s right to exist, alone among the world’s states, or boycotting Israeli goods while neglecting other human-rights abusers, are themselves straightforwardly anti-Semitic; others…
By Bagehot ANOTHER day, another figure in the Labour Party facing allegations of anti-Semitism. Today it is Ken Livingstone, who went on the BBC to comment on Jeremy Corbyn’s belated and reluctant decision yesterday to suspend Naz Shah, an MP who had suggested that Israel’s population be relocated to America. The former mayor of London,…
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