Author Archives: tpbale

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About tpbale

I teach politics at Queen Mary University of London.

‘With Nigel Farage off the scene, will it be easier to reach a compromise with the EU on free movement? No’, City AM, 5 July 2016.

Nigel Farage has a fair claim to being the country’s most influential politician of the last decade. The pressure his party exerted on the Tories forced David Cameron into a referendum which he never wanted but now looks set to … Continue reading

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‘Jezza’s Bezzas: Labour’s New Members’, Huffington Post, 28 June 2016.

Labour is in crisis. Whoever stands in the next leadership contest will have to face its grassroots members, large numbers of whom joined the party to help elect Jeremy Corbyn in 2015. With the help of YouGov and as part … Continue reading

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‘Simply unstoppable or a self-inflicted wound?’, UK in a Changing Europe, 21 June 2016.

Today, we heard the Prime Minister give his final plea on why we should remain in the European Union, but if David Cameron ever truly believed he could stop his party ‘banging on about Europe’ when it finally got back … Continue reading

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‘Antisemitism is rare in Britain, but Labour should still examine itself’, New Statesman, 20 May 2016.

Another week, another bunch of stories about antisemitism in the Labour Party.  First off we had the announcement that Shami Chakrabarti’s inquiry would aim to report by the end of June.  Barely had we had time to digest that before we … Continue reading

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‘The Corn Laws analogy is misplaced. There’s no good reason why the Tories should split over Europe’, ConservativeHome, 17 May 2016.

An apocryphal aphorism coined by a firebrand left-wing legend might not be an obvious way to start a discussion about what could happen to the Conservative Party in the wake of the EU Referendum, but Nye Bevan surely had a … Continue reading

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‘David Cameron is not the man to shoot the Conservative Eurosceptic dog’, Telegraph, 10 May 2016

You know the Tory Civil War is back on when the body-snatching starts again in earnest.  A few weeks ago, Winston Churchill’s grandson, Sir Nicholas Soames, the MP for Mid-Sussex, made it plain that he took a dim view of … Continue reading

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‘Labour voters don’t have a problem with Jewish people….’, Telegraph, 5 May 2016

This time last year, many people believed that the Labour Party was about to supply the UK with its first Jewish Prime Minister since Benjamin Disraeli.  How things have changed.  The party that was led by Ed Miliband for five … Continue reading

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‘How should Labour’s disgruntled moderates behave?’, New Statesman, 4 May 2016

When Albert O. Hirschman was writing Exit, Voice, Loyalty: Responses to decline in Firms, Organizations, and States he wasn’t thinking of the British Labour Party. That doesn’t mean, though, that one of the world’s seminal applications of economics to politics … Continue reading

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‘Where now are the earthly paradises from which an idealist can take hope?’, Observer, 20 March 2016.

It is only natural, when that hopey-changey thing is in short supply at home, that idealists start looking overseas for inspiration. And for some, it doesn’t stop there. Not content with attending demos and maybe tweeting and Facebooking in support … Continue reading

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‘Gloves are off in Brexit battle’, Mirror, 20 March 2016.

VOTERS might never have been able to take Iain Duncan Smith too seriously, especially when he was Tory leader from 2001 to 2003. But to many MPs and ordinary grassroots members he matters. IDS represents the “faith, flag and family” … Continue reading

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