Two snorts and a smile: A new study of James Bryce reviewedJames Bryce was an academic who became a Liberal MP and then a diplomat - he served as Britain's ambassador in Washington from 1907 to 1913. He doesn't sound or look the sort of person to give rise to humour, but Jonathan Parry's review of a new study of Bryce for the London Review of Books won two snorts and a smile from me. First snort (I have a dark sense of humour): His schoolmaster father, a devoted geologist and botanist, taught him to observe the beauties of the natural world, believing that revelation and natural science were God's complementary ... (more) |
Michael Meadowcroft (1942-2026)Embed from Getty ImagesSad news on Liberal Democrat Voice this morning: Michael Meadowcroft has died at the age of 84. His victory in Leeds West in 1983 - the first Liberal gain from Labour at a general election in decades - was one of the few high points of what was, in the context of the Alliance's hopes and ambitions, a deeply disappointing election night. By then Michael already had a reputation as the Liberal Party's thinker - I remember the frisson when he turned up on the final day of a Union of Liberal Students conference in Leeds in ... (more) |
Michael MeadowcroftIt is with great sadness that we note the passing of Michael Meadowcroft. The West Leeds Dispatch reports: "Former Liberal MP for Leeds West, alderman, journalist and political affairs consultant, Michael Meadowcroft, has died at the age of 84 after a short illness, his family have announced." We will, of course, carry a full obituary for Michael in due course. For now, we link to a 2020 piece Michael wrote for Liberal Democrat Voice which politely gave the party a kick up the proverbial, ending with these words: To survive in any meaningful political and electoral presence, the party has ... (more) |
Stopping Billionaires from buying British politicsThere is an interesting article on Byline Times in which Oliver Bullough, who has written a number of books about the way oligarchs and corrupt state players exploit the UK's financial system to launder and hide money, argues that we must act now to prevent a complete oligarch takeover of British politics. Bullough says that when you step back and look at Nigel Farage's £5 million gift from Christopher Harborne, even when you compare it to illegal donations, you can see that there has never been anything like it in British politics, and people are right therefore to be more ... (more) |
John Rogers wanders the City of London's passages and alleywaysI sometimes wonder if one of the reasons the "London isn't safe" propaganda has gained such a hold is that the city has changed so much in recent decades. I hardly recognise the skyline from the days when I worked there in the 1980s. But maybe London has always been like that. Go back another 40 years from when I knew it well and you would find a very different cityscape of bombsites and ruins. Still, a lot of "the old London" remains. In fact, I was surprised how much of it John Rogers found on this walk. Here's his ... (more) |
The fault, dear Mandy, is not in your stars, but in yourselfEmbed from Getty ImagesSomeone once asked Max Clifford: "Max, if you're so brilliant at public relations, why does everyone think you're a cunt?" Similarly, I would like to ask Peter Mandelson why, if he's such a master of the dark arts, he's always being found out. Perhaps the answer is to be found in this character sketch by John Crace: Betrayal is Mandelson's lifeblood. It's there in his treatment of Wes Streeting. Poor trusting Wes. A man more used to stabbing others in the back. Wes looked up to Mandy. Treated him as a mentor. How did Peter repay him? ... (more) |
People who never use AI are very bad at spotting AI-generated textAI use is seeping out of business and science writing and into the world of literature. And that, says Malin Hay in a post on the London Review of Books blog, is a problem, because literary editors may be the worst equipped to spot text generated by it: Experimenters in the US last year showed nine subjects a series of articles, half written by humans and half generated by ChatGPT, Claude and other large language models. Asked to guess which of the texts were human, the four subjects who rarely or never used ChatGPT in their daily lives scored "at ... (more) |
Will Labour close the 'Trump loophole' in its political reform plans?The latest edition of my email newsletter about work in Parliament, A Lord's Eye View, is out and you can also read it in full below. But if you'd like to get future editions emailed direct to you as soon as they are published, sign up now: The government is right to want to protect our democracy from being flooded by dodgy foreign money. But as I've highlighted before, their plans leave far too many loopholes. So I took the chance today to raise this topic again, this time using Donald Trump as an example. Did someone share this with ... (more) |
Mathew on Monday: Pluralism Means More Than a SloganOn Saturday I travelled down to London to attend the Compass and Progressive Economy Forum's Change: NOW! Conference, which brought together around 700 people from across the progressive spectrum for what felt like a serious and timely conversation about the future of politics in Britain. In an age of deep political fragmentation, rising populism and the growing threat posed by Nigel Farage and Reform UK there was something very refreshing about spending a day at an event where people were prepared to engage with those beyond their own political tribe. Speakers included Caroline Lucas, Vince Cable, Zack Polanski, Clive Lewis ... (more) |
How much must we pay for the fantasies of Mayor Rotheram?Another week another undeliverable scheme comes from Mayor Rotherham and the Merseyside Combined Authority. This time it was a reaffirmation of the Central Station plan which had been announced at the start of the year. And this is not the only Mayoral fantasy. The other is the Mersey Barrage which has been discussed ever since I first became a councillor 51 years ago (I had 8 years off for good behaviour, so I have only completed 43 years so far!) And how could I forget the third 'back of a fag packet' offering from Mr Mayor which is making the ... (more) |