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Jeremy Corbyn: Reactionary not Revolutionary

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Leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.  It is in the ranks of those most bitterly resisting change, not leading the progressive forward charge, that Jeremy Corbyn has ever been foremost. He is a Labour leader of the past, not the future.  The Labour leader revels in raging against the establishment, exults in playing the revolutionary, but in truth there is more of the reactionary than the radical in Jeremy Corbyn. A Bennite without Tony Benn’s effortless charm, a disciple of Michael Foot without Foot’s wit or intelligence, Corbyn lacks even the decency to confine himself to the 1980s. Instead, for the benefit of those who missed the show first-time round, he’s determined to stage a re-enactment. But regardless of whether this election ends up resembling more 1983 or 1987, Mr Corbyn has certainly proven himself to be no harbinger of the future. He is instead little more than the shadow of a discredited past. With dogmatism seldom being the bed-fellow of origi
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FN loses rising star: Marion Maréchal-Le Pen steps back from politics. For now.

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“More people worship the rising sun than the setting sun,” a young and ambitious Roman general is said to have quipped ominously to the ageing dictator Sulla. For many in France’s Front National , the twenty-seven year old Marion Maréchal-Le Pen was the rising sun they saw as the future of their movement. But yesterday she announced her withdrawal from political life. At least for now.  On Wednesday Marion Maréchal-Le Pen confirmed that she would not be seeking re-election to the National Assembly seat she has represented since 2012 (when she became the youngest French MP since Robespierre’s acolyte Louis Antoine de Saint-Just in 1791). Instead, she would be stepping back from frontline politics in order to concentrate on being a mother to her two-year old daughter and gain some life experience outside the political arena. But the wording of her statement makes clear that, far from ending her political career, her departure is intended to enhance a future return. 
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The Return of Renzi: Italy’s former Prime Minister is re-elected leader of governing Democratic Party

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Matteo Renzi celebrates his re-election as Secretary of Italy’s Democratic Party. His two opponents left trailing in the dust, Matteo Renzi last night stormed to victory in the primaries of Italy's governing Democratic Party. Returning to the role he had stepped down from in February, the former Prime Minister succeeded in securing a resounding 70 percent of the vote, sending a clear message to his detractors that, despite being forced out of government by national rejection of his flagship constitutional reforms last December, Matteo Renzi is not yet a spent force in Italian politics.  Reported to be closely watching the rise of Emmanuel Macron in France, it is no secret that Renzi sees in the French presidential candidate a blueprint for the revival of his own fortunes south of the Alps. The adoption by Renzi’s campaign of the slogan In Cammino (On the way), an almost direct transliteration of Macron’s En Marche , has drawn many to compare the two unashamed continental
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TWENTY YEARS ON FROM NEW LABOUR’S HISTORIC VICTORY, THE CENTRE IS AGAIN RESURGENT

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A newly elected Tony Blair arrives in Downing Street, 2nd May 1997 Today marks the twentieth anniversary of Labour’s 1997 landslide victory, the greatest ever achieved in the party’s history and one which ushered in thirteen years of unbroken Labour rule. Swept into government on a wave of optimism, Tony Blair secured for the Centre-ground a dominant grip on British politics only recently broken by Corbyn’s election as Labour leader, the vote to leave the European Union and David Cameron’s departure from Downing Street. In viewing the current state of Anglo-American politics, a progressive centrist might rightly despair. Brexit in Britain and Trump in the US seem to spell the resounding rejection of Blair’s brand of third-way politics. The party of Jeremy Corbyn makes no secret of its disavowal of the New Labour legacy. Despite it being twenty years on from 1997, Corbyn’s Labour increasingly acts as if it were once again 1983 and is likely on course to earn itself a similar
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Feeding the Fire: How New Labour’s attempts at neutralising the immigration debate unwittingly made it dominate the discourse

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In 2006, former Home Office advisor Nick Pearce hailed a ‘shift in the political landscape which is here to stay.’ So firmly had the public been persuaded of the benefits of migration that, Pearce believed, it had ceased to be a topic of contention: ‘Even the Tories will not row back on this.’ He could not have been more wrong. In 2016 Britain voted to leave the European Union following a referendum campaign overwhelmingly dominated by the question of immigration, 56 percent of Britons reportedly viewing it as the most important political issue. Back in 2007, when Tony Blair left Downing Street, the figure neared 40 percent. Yet ten years before, when New Labour swept to power, only 3 percent rated it their top concern and the new government came to office intending to remove the issue from the arena of political debate. Instead, they only fed what they fought to extinguish. Blair’s government was determined to appear strong on the issue of migration, determined to reass
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The Brexit Election: Not what government, but what Brexit

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This election is not about changing government. There is no realistic prospect of that. Mrs May will still be Prime Minister on 9th June (even the question of Jeremy Corbyn remaining Leader of the Opposition seems likely to be answered in the affirmative). Given the near inevitability of Conservative victory in the current political climate, the question put to the people is not what government, but what Brexit? This election will determine the shape of Britain's exit from the European Union and what the post-Brexit nation will look like. Britain's future prosperity and position in the world depends on the outcome of the Brexit negotiations, there is no more important question in British politics today, and it must be answered rightly, In a future filled with uncertainty there is at least one truth: Labour is heading for defeat. Corbyn's leadership is not the sole source of Labour's woes, whoever the leader the electoral mountain the party needs to climb woul
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The French Renzi: EM! Emmanuel and Matteo

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Emmanuel Macron and Matteo Renzi Hailed by many as France's Tony Blair, and with a consistent lead in the polls, Emmanuel Macron seems set to beat off Marine Le Pen and become the next President of the French Republic. But though clearly a politician of the third-way, a more direct parallel for Macron than Blair appears in the form of recently defeated Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi . EM may be the acronym of Macron's En Marche movement, as well as his own initials, but it also nicely symbolizes the political affinity of Emmanuel and Matteo, cut as they both seemingly are from the same continental centrist cloth.  Parallel Policies Not only in style and philosophy, but also in proposed programme does Macron follow Renzi, with some policies outlined in the En Marche   manifesto directly paralleling those sought and implemented by the former Italian Prime Minister.  The most obvious is the €500 'Culture Pass,' promised by Macron to all 18 year ol
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