‘Walkout over Labour candidate choice’ is the headline screaming from the BBC website, with similar stories of a Labour leader rocked by the mass desertion of local party activists. Except this wasn’t Wakefield on Sunday, but Rotherham in November 2012 when 80-plus Labour members walked out of the meeting which…

BY PAUL RICHARDS There’s an interesting debate to be had about the differential impact of traditional campaign methodology, the ‘ground war’, on the actual results of local elections. Often the best-laid plans are stymied by the pesky voters: target seats are lost and ‘unwinnables’…

Wakefield — the by-election both sides must win All eyes on Wakefield. The resignation of convicted sex criminal Imran Ahmed Khan means a by-election is on the way, and with it all the attendant rune-reading, augury, crystal-ball gazing and punditry. After the May local elections, the Wakefield by-election will be…

Neil Kinnock is eighty. For the generation which dug deep for the miners, wanted Maggie out, out, out, was revulsed by the scuttling taxis, and wanted to meet the challenge and make the change, this comes as something of a shock. If our hero is 80, that must mean we…

If you ask your Bucharest taxi driver nicely, and perhaps offer a few extra Lei, they will take you to Revolution Square and point out the very balcony where Nicolae Ceausescu made his final speech on 21 December 1989. Ceausescu, communist despot, was architect of myriad crimes including draconian abortion…

On 12 December 2019, just two years ago, the Labour Party was crashing to a catastrophic defeat. The voters let us know what they thought about the previous five years, with a final and crushing verdict. From Bolsover to Bridgend, from Wakefield to Wrexham, Labour voters rejected the party they…

Labour’s challenge as delegates gather in Brighton this morning is not the absence of policy. Labour has lots of policies. The problem is that some of them are obscure, some fantastical, some outdated, and some just plain wrong. We can debate which is which later over coffee. The main problem…

Michael Gove, truly the main beneficiary of the recent reshuffle, has stamped his mark on Government with the easiest and most obvious tool to hand: renaming his department. Overnight, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities was conjured from Gove’s fevered imagination. The DLUHC is the latest incarnation of…

The leafy lanes and pretty Chiltern villages surrounding Chesham and Amersham are not immediately redolent of Labour history. Swan Bottom is a long way from Clydeside, and Cholesbury is no Tolpuddle. Yet growing up in the area, I was always fascinated by the stories of three Labour titans who were…