Ex-Foreign Office adviser to Robin Cook. Ethical socialist. Politics, foreign policy, Europe, Russia & Ukraine, football/HMFC🇱🇻MUFC🇾🇪.
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Jul 9 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
This boast will age badly, I suspect. Beneath the headline figures, the politics of England and Scotland continued to diverge last week, leading me to conclude that independence has been deferred rather than defeated. Let me explain why. 1/
On the surface of it, the results north and south of the border looked strikingly similar. Labour made big gains in seats on similar shares of the vote - 35.3% in Scotland and 34.4% in England. 2/
Aug 28, 2022 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
This seems bonkers at first glance, but when you think about it, it’s actually much worse. It suggests that unionism has now supplanted democratic socialism as Labour’s core belief system. It would certainly be interesting to see this historic shift debated at conference. 1/
There is no suggestion that the proposed constitutional change would rule out coalitions with any other parties whose policies conflict with Labour’s; not even with the hated Tories. The SNP (and presumably Plaid Cymru), uniquely, are to be designated as untouchables. 2/
Aug 12, 2020 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
THREAD: I am now at the end (hopefully) of a week-long journey through the Kafkaesque maze of the Government’s COVID-19 self-isolation bureaucracy. It strikes me as a perfect illustration of how inept and amateurish the governance of the UK has sadly become. 1/
I visited Belgium last week, which at the time was on the exempt list of countries not requiring returnees to self-isolate. I filled out the form stating all the relevant details. It was checked on return to the UK last Thursday. Belgium became non-exempt two days later. 2/
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