Latest editorial
KEIR STARMER’S think piece for the Fabian Society, The Road Ahead, has been widely mocked ever since it was reported that he hoped a 14,000-word essay would get his leadership back on track.
The end product has hardly changed minds, with most responses focusing on its vacuousness (“a focus group crafted version of the Sermon on the Mount, filled with platitudes but … no content,” in the words of John McDonnell).
Nonetheless the essay is not irrelevant. Its “10 principles” — vague nostrums like “if you work hard and play by the rules, you should be rewarded fairly” — are a clear bid to replace the 10 pledges (which committed him to actual political positions such as “common ownership of rail, mail, energy and water”) that he made to secure election as leader.
The new Scottish Parliament looks set to continue a cycle of managerial tinkering while public services face the axe, writes STEPHEN LOW
Our political sphere, stripped of its popular component by decades of neoliberalism, sits apart from the public, writes COLL MCCAIL citing a telling parallel with the writings of French revolutionary Abbe Sieyes
The Carpathia isn’t coming to rescue this government still swimming in the mire, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER