Year: 2019
-
Don’t call him Boris
Don’t call him Boris. It’s the name for a cuddly toy, a cute little Russian boy a dashing guy from a book by Tolstoy. Don’t call him Bojo. He’s not fast like Flo Jo or sexy like J Lo. Don’t mix up mojo with a sleazy libido. Don’t even call him a Bozo. He’s not…
-
Two letters about the Labour Party and losing the election that I found helpful and worth learning from
The one is a very moving letter from former MP Laura Pidcock (who lost her seat last week) addressed to the residents of her constituency North West Durham: https://medium.com/@laura.pidcock.mp/letter-to-the-people-i-represented-406aea893243 The other is an equally moving comment in the Guardian from Andrew Fisher, who was Labour’s executive director of policy from 2016 to 2019: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/17/corbyn-mcdonnell-transformed-labour I…
-
Ten reasons why we lost the election and some thoughts about the future
1. There are serious self-defeating political splits inside the Labour Party – with the different sides openly and publicly criticising and working against each other. People criticise each other endlessly on both the right and the left of the party, and form power-pushing membership groups. I think membership groups inside the party should be disbanded,…
-
Tactical voting is a self-fulfilling prophecy that takes political decision-making out of your hands: vote Labour
For the last week, while canvassing, I’ve met several longstanding Labour Party members who said they didn’t know who they were voting for yet. Why? First, because they think defeating Boris is the most important issue. Second, because they needed to wait for the tactical voting websites to tell them who is more likely to…
-
How not to succeed in publishing a paper on an FGM trial, and keep trying
In February 2019 an African-born woman living in the UK was the first person to be convicted of the genital cutting (FGM) of her small daughter. I observed the trial and wrote a long blog about it, which I posted here. I have never previously considered a “blog” to be a published piece of writing. As a…