Author Archives: tpbale

Britain, welcome to Europe. Nigel Farage’s upstart Brexit Party — which ran away with 32 percent of the vote and is set to gain 28 seats in the European Parliament — has blown the United Kingdom’s political system to pieces. And paradoxically, it’s … Continue reading →

After the initial surge of sympathy provoked in my sentimental old soul by Theresa May’s tears at the end of her speech in Downing Street, all I could think of were Oscar Wilde’s words on Charles Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop: … Continue reading →

Was Margaret Thatcher right? Not about everything, obviously. Only the true-Blue keepers of the flame believe that, surely? But was she right about ‘popular capitalism‘, the intuitively plausible idea formed by Tories in heady days of the Eighties that held … Continue reading →

Jeremy Corbyn is not for turning. Swinging Labour behind another referendum seems to make sense on so many levels. Yet, for the moment anyway, he simply won’t do it – to the obvious frustration not just of #PeoplesVote fans but … Continue reading →

“The crisis”, according to Antonio Gramsci, “consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” Sure, those lines were penned (in prison as … Continue reading →

“It’s a funny old world,” observed Margaret Thatcher as she was forced by her party to step down as Tory leader and UK prime minister back in 1990. She’d won the Conservatives three elections on the trot — two of … Continue reading →

With Theresa May finally on her way out of Downing Street, a Tory leadership contest that has been bubbling under for months is now starting. It’s a two-stage process. The first sees votes among Conservative MPs designed to whittle the … Continue reading →