Iain Macwhirter
Uncategorized
The Class Ceiling: it’s not just the glass, but the ceiling that we should be questioning.
WE’VE all heard of the “glass ceiling”: the invisible barriers to advancement that face women and people from ethnic minorities. But what has been given a lot less attention in the past couple of decades is the enduring “class ceiling” – the barriers preventing working-class people from rising up the career ladder. It’s been convenient … Continue reading
It’s make-your-mind-up-time on Brexit. But is Labour capable of it?
After nearly three years of Brexit, and on the even of the meaningful vote, we still don’t know what Labour opposition’s policy is on the most important issue facing the UK in half a century. Is Labour a pro-Brexit party, as it’s leadership clearly believe, and its conference resolutions confirm. Or is it a Remain … Continue reading
Dear Politicians: stop using hate crime to outlaw offensive behaviour.
‘DEAR Misandrists. If you spread hatred against men, you should be worried. If we hear you, you’ll be reported. Yours, Police Scotland”. Could we start seeing posters like that appearing in bus shelters across Scotland. The UK and Scottish governments are planning to make misogyny a hate crime and, in England at least, the Law … Continue reading
Project Fear? They were right all along. (Only it’s worse)
It is an extraordinary story: a kind of reverse Fake News. Instead of people being led to believe something false, the public appear not to believe something that is actually true. Perhaps the Russians have been fiddling with out brains again. Or maybe we just have a higher tolerance for hardship when it’s self-inflicted. At … Continue reading
“The People Versus Tech” by Jamie Bartlett. Review.
Jamie Bartlett is a former digital evangelist who proselytised all things web for the left-leaning think-tank Demos since the early noughties. We all drank the digital Kool Aid and thought that this new technology would hand power to the people and improve the quality of public debate. That was until the Arab Spring started to … Continue reading
The media may have lost interest in the chemical attacks in Salisbury and Douma, but social media hasn’t.
THE mainstream media has a notoriously short attention span, but it seems to have largely lost interest in the chemical warfare attacks allegedly made with Russian connivance in Salisbury and Douma. The UK victims, Sergei and Yulia Skripal, have made what is officially described as a miraculous recovery and been spirited away, furnished, we are told, … Continue reading
Brexit isn’t even working for racists – so why can no one stop it?
It was a fitting if sombre irony that the Windrush generation scandal broke on the 50th anniversary of Enoch Powell’s infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech. Public attitudes have moved on and modern Britain is not the racially torn dystopia that Powell predicted. Far from it – most voters agree that migration and open borders benefit … Continue reading
Review: Labour veteran, Tom Harris, and Cobynite, Liam Young, may loathe each other – but they’re not nearly as far apart as they think they are.
Ten Years in the Death of the Labour Party by Tom Harris. Biteback, £12.99 Rise – How Jeremy Corbyn Inspired the Young to Create a New Socialism by Liam Young, Simon and Schuster, £12.99 If you want to to understand the turmoil in the British Labour Party, and why it matters for the future of … Continue reading
As Number Ten prepares to impose consent for the Brexit “power grab” – why Sturgeon was right to defend Donald Dewar’s devolution.
If we’ve been hearing less from the Scottish opposition parties about Nicola Sturgeon obsessing about independence and not “getting on with the day job”, this may be because she has been doing exactly that. For most of the past year, the First Minister has been arguing, essentially, the case for devolution not independence. First, … Continue reading
Brexit Britain and Donald Trump: a coalition of the ignorant, repeating the mistakes of the past.
It’s often said that we live in a world of “rules-based” international relations. We no longer have kings and imperial states laying down the law, forcing people to obey. We don’t settle international disputes by war, as countries did almost routinely in the 19th century. We have laws, conventions and treaties to govern … Continue reading
