Solid Workers

By now, it's become almost customary to write about Boris Johnson using words like 'shambles', 'disastrous', 'incompetence' and phrases that convey a sense of permanent and deepening crisis. Not wanting to follow the press pack as they herd around these tasty morsels, one cannot help be struck by how bad the government's final day before prorogation was. We know from the beginning Johnson set the bar pretty low, but he keeps on confounding us by sinking further into the mire. Following what was probably the worst week any government of my lifetime has suffered, Johnson bombed at his press conference with the Irish Taoiseach , Leo Varadkar, and he bombed twice in the Commons last night - one for his utterly doomed attempt at dissolving parliament and securing a general election, and the other concerning the release of text messages, WhatsApp messages and the like from Dominic Cummings and the Downing Street back office operation. Neither the press confer...

Who hasn't looked over the edge of a tall building, a cliff, a canyon, or a hole and found themselves filled with a vertiginous feeling? Well, a a week into Boris Island and we find this discomforting sensation is the basis of the new Prime Minister's Brexit strategy. Consider the developments that have taken place since we last expended some words on Boris Johnson. He's visited the regions and the nations of the UK, bringing with him everywhere his boundless optimism and booing crowds. He met with Nicola Sturgeon in Edinburgh and revealed to her his Brexit plan was, well, keep your fingers crossed. He went to Wales and said a no-deal Brexit will be the EU's fault . And his visit to Northern Ireland was less than a roaring success, with attempts to get Stormont talks moving again falling flat and Sinn Fein raising the prospect of a unity referendum in the event of no deal. For those of us who'd like to see a united Ireland, every cloud. In no uncertain terms it has...

It's not only Theresa May who's preparing her departure from the political scene. At the time of writing, the Socialist Party is on the verge of the most damaging split in its history. On the one side you have Peter Taaffe, the organisation's general secretary of 55 years and counting. Backing him is the majority of the membership in England and Wales, the Scottish "section" and, um, precious few others. Arrayed against the loyalists are the majority of the international organisation - the Committee for a Workers' International - including its most successful section, the Socialist Party in Ireland. And as with all splits in politics, which Change UK have recently reminded us , there are good reasons and there are real reasons. If you care to avail yourself of the leaked documents the different players have exchanged (and leaked), for Taaffe and his comrades this is the struggle between proletarian politics, as uniquely elaborated by the SP's particular b...

In their 1994 study of the Tory party membership, Patrick Seyd, Jeremy Richardson and Paul Whiteley came to the surprising conclusion that despite the success of the Thatcher years, the membership were, in the main, distinctly non-Thatcherite and much less extreme than the "swivel-eyed loons" referenced 20 years later . Well, if a certain YouGov poll of party members is anything to go by, we've gone way beyond even that . In case you haven't heard, 63% would rather have Brexit if it meant Scotland leaving the UK, 61% if it meant severe damage to the UK economy, 59% if Northern Ireland left, and 54% prioritise Brexit over the continued survival of the Conservative Party . The only thing that is not an acceptable price to pay is Jeremy Corbyn in Number 10. Interesting. Okay, so what is happening. How have we gone from a party whose official mythology paints it as level headed, and pragmatic in the pursuit of power to, well, outright psychopathy? Stephen Bush suggests ...