A conditional defence of politics

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Wrestling daily with a medium sized but slightly volatile black dog, I am finding it difficult to get started on a five thousand word piece I have promised to Political Quarterly on the subject of the half century anniversary of Bernard Crick’s book ‘In

Good, wise and happy

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Reader, if I say that West Brom’s 5-1 weekend victory over Wolves cheered me up only briefly, you will know the slough of despond through which I am now doggedly crawling. Still, life goes on, blogging is a welcome distraction and the comments posted to the

'Wrong' said Fred

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This morning on the Today Programme I heard Labour MP John Mann question whether the public humiliation of Fred Goodwin might detract from the need to engage in deeper questions. It put me in mind of a personal dilemma.

Mr Gove’s hidden devil

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There has been a great deal of attention paid to Mr Gove’s long predicted move to scrap some BTecs and reduce the league table value of the rest to one GCSE (from as many as four). But what will be the result in terms of secondary school priorities? Looking

Universities - it's about asking the hard questions

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I am speaking on Wednesday about innovation in higher education. I thought I might lay out my speech outline today to see if I can grab some useful feedback from readers ahead of the event.

Spinners and bangers

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‘Sell the sizzle not the sausage’ goes the old advertising phrase. Political strategists too have been creative in exploring the stretchable space between substance and message. As a former member of the New Labour junta I am hardly in a position to complain,

My new progressivism. Part three, politics

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The third instalment of ‘my new progressivism’ (I haven’t yet been consumed by my own verbosity and pomposity, but we are only half way through the week).

Towards my new progressivism - part one

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In my earlier posting I promised to explore some ideas for a new progressivism growing from the rubble of the hegemonic individualism of the last thirty years. This turns out to be a lot more difficult to write than it seemed when I was thinking great

Towards a new progressivism

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Voter volatility, party fortunes and the uncertainties of 2009

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Like millions of others (some though choice, some through necessity) I am on holiday for two weeks. But I will keep posting. This week a theme will be the current party political scene. Next week I hope to ask what might be the key planks of a new progressive