When Britain awoke on 11 December 2019, it was greeted by a 78-seat Conservative majority and the worst result for Labour since 1935. The once-moderate party of Clement Attlee with the welfare state and NATO, Harold Wilson with comprehensive education…
The coming to power of the First Labour Government in January 1924 was an important event in British history, marking the first time that Labour, a democratic socialist party committed to radical social change, attained national office. The product of…
You may have noticed recently that the papers and the pundits have been saying that Britain is heading back to the seventies. Although many today possess a mythologised view of the 1970s – a decade of political division and social…
It has now been several weeks since the local elections. All the results have long come in, but it has only been recently that councils around the country are forming. Nationally, the Conservatives lost over 500 councillors, many of them…
It’s fascinating how quickly so much can change in politics. Two years ago, Boris Johnson led the Conservatives to their best general election result since Margaret Thatcher’s landslide in 1987 and left a Labour opposition in tatters with just 202…
Over the coming months, Backbench will be partnering with Torrin Wilkins, Director of Centre Think Tank for a series of comment pieces. In his column, Torrin will explore prominent policy issues – some of them related to the latest news…
Other than party members and journalists, not many people are particularly interested in the inner workings of political parties. Some Conservatives may like to assume that Labour are dominated by students calling for revolution from relatively affluent university constituencies, whilst…
With the party briefing its members to expect a general election by 2023, I thought it was ample time to look at a few, and I mean few, positives in the Labour Party right now. But let’s not get carried…
Discussing the cataclysmic events of 2020 and 2021 should, in my eyes, be an Olympic sport. You can ponder public health, the NHS or even slip into a conversation about which vaccine you received. Yet, despite these obvious changes to…