Opinion

This week's announcement that nine Labour MPs have quit the party to join forces with centrist Conservatives as the Independent Group sounds like a little bit of history repeating for those old enough to remember the formation of the Social Democratic Party. In January 1981, four cabinet ministers announced their intention to move away from the Labour Party, citing concerns over the direction - namely, to the left - that the party was heading in. They claimed "a handful of trade union...

A cross party coalition between the Liberal Democrats, SNP and newly-formed Independent Group could stand a chance of ousting the big two for the first time in modern British political history at the next General Election if they campaign on a Remain ticket.  Early indications suggest the Independent Group and Liberal Democrats would account for more than 20 per cent of the vote if an election was held tomorrow. Added to the 35 SNP MPs currently sitting in parliament it...

Honda's decision to shut its factory in Swindon with the loss of 3,500 jobs is nothing to do with Brexit. The move, which comes on the back of a number of crushing manufacturing blows, was confirmed as a non-Brexit-related issue by the firm's most senior executive in Europe on the Today Programme. Like Sony, Dyson, Jaguar Land Rover, Panasonic, Lloyds, Unilever, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Airbus, Flybmi, P&O, HSBC, JP Morgan, UBS, Ford, Hitachi, Toshiba, AXA, Moneygram, Philips and the Bank of America, it's...

So, MPs have left the Labour Party to form an Independent Group. Is this the beginning of the end? Can Labour escape from this and its Brexit dilemmas, or is there no way out? 63% of Labour’s vote in 2017 came from remain supporters, and 37% from leave supporters, and if it is to win the next election, Labour has to keep these voters and attract others from both camps. The polls – and the MPs who have just walked...

There is a British baby in Syria. His name is Jarah. He’s only a few days old. His two older siblings are dead. He might never see his father. And his mother? She’s an object of hate. Plastered across British newspapers, Shamima Begum is the ‘Jihadi bride’ who’s been told in no uncertain terms that the UK is not her home any more. Maybe you can’t blame people for feeling no sympathy for a woman who left home to join...

Was Winston Churchill a bad person? It’s amazing how such a simple question has set off a storm of acrimony and accusations. John McDonnell must have known what would happen when he attacked one of the sacred cows of British nationalist myth. McDonnell has problems of his own to contend with, but on this issue he’s a struck a chord. Churchill was perhaps a villain, certainly an imperialist and frequently a British chauvinist. He was also the man the UK...

Buying more lottery tickets is a sure-fire way of losing more money, and philosophically speaking, it doesn’t even increase your chances of winning. Think of it this way. If you have two tickets in your hand, which one is more likely to win? Neither, right? They both stand the same chance. And just because you have two tickets in your hand it doesn’t increase the likelihood that one of them will win, it just means you paid out (or lost)...

"The Labour Party has always been about people", the party's website proudly states on its legacy page. It was formed to give ordinary people a voice and has "sought power in order to improve their lives", with achievements from the NHS to the welfare state that have made a lasting difference to the lives of people across our country. After more than a century of helping to make worker's lives better the Labour Party is now renowned as one of the most...

“Mass deportation flights to Jamaica have been shown time and time again to be unjust and brutal tools of Theresa May’s government"