Category: “Politics”

For various reasons I have seen no news coverage and read no newspaper reports of the Tory conference since Sunday morning. This has not been a deliberate snub to one of the two ruling parties, just the result of other things getting in the way. So today I spent a little time wandering around the [...]

With thanks to Labour’s media monitoring department, and to the Financial Times, here is the first’s account of the second’s report today on school standards. ‘Poorer pupils seen to be catching up in exams’ (FT p4) – Poorer children closed the educational achievement gap on children from wealthier backgrounds during Labour’s last term of office, [...]

An interesting little passage in Polly Toynbee’s column in The Guardian this morning, as she described the post-Ed speech process in the press room at Liverpool. “‘Lurching to the left’ and ‘Red Ed’ were the inevitable responses of the mostly rightwing press convening in an instant huddle after the speech. If you want to see [...]

Ed Miliband said he was going to be his own man, and follow his own instincts and his own values, which is surely the right approach for a leader. He was at his best today when he was passionate about where those instincts and values lay. He had a core argument – that the political, [...]

At least the economy is centre stage as Labour’s conference begins. It has to be. And finally, after a year of the main parties arguing over the size and scale of the deficit, and the speed with which it should be reduced, the argument appears to be moving to the much bigger issues that now [...]

The news was a little bit scary last night. Because whilst accepting that the media likes to put over the most negative view of the world, even the ones who usually show a bit of balance left you with the impression it was all gloom, gloom, gloom. And there is a horrible feeling of self-fulfilling [...]

To a posh Knightsbridge hotel last night, and the launch of the Harvard Business Review in London, which they chose to celebrate with a discussion between me and BT chairman Sir Michael Rake. Nice guy, and very smart. At one point the moderator, the splendidly named Adi Ignatius, chastised us gently for ‘agreeing too much’. [...]

As the Liberal Democrats prepare for their conference, I hope enough of them will be tugged by the Democrat side of the equation to make an issue of the government’s preparations for the planned boundary changes. I refer not simply to the redrawing of boundaries, loaded though this is in favour of the Tories, but [...]

One of the downsides (or should that be upsides?) of being moderately well known, and very accessible via social media, is that you get bombarded with people asking for time, money, contacts, ideas and expertise for their (invariably) good causes. On twitter, there is rarely a day, and some days rarely an hour, that there’s [...]

Very much in ‘partner of’ role, I went the other evening to the launch of School Wars, a book on the current battle for the future of education policy, written by Fiona’s fellow campaigner for comprehensive schools, Melissa Benn. Melissa is a good writer and thoroughly nice person, so I overcame my general reluctance to [...]