Dear Gordon, A word of congratulations about the way you have brought the banks into public ownership. In the crisis they have dragged us into, no other lifeline was worth entertaining. Congratulations too in calling for an international conference to rewrite the...
02/07/09 "Tilting at rainstorms" Watching the exchanges between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, I can’t help feeling that my mother would have sent them off to bed without an evening meal; two men, afraid to face the future, bickering about how much can be blamed on the past.
Gordon Brown’s ‘make or break’ speech to the Parliamentary Labour Party was not a bravura performance. It didn’t need to be. There were moments of passion, moments of humility, but the revolutionary moment had come and gone before....
Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to your own deliberations on the review of MP's’ expenses, staffing and allowances. I would like to make the following observations, beginning with elements I think are most straightforward and important.
At the moment, serious politics in Britain has imploded. The outrageous abuse, by some MPs, of the Parliamentary allowances system has lead to a general denunciation of everyone. Newspapers have discovered that they no longer need....
Oh dear. Here we go again. First we have bankers queuing up to say ‘sorry’ for screwing the economy. Next we have political leaders self-flagellating over MP's allowances. What is the connection? It goes deep into the roots of New Labour’s flirtation with neo-liberalism.
Forget the tabloid obsessions with sleaze, sex lives and spin. The period running between the G20 conference in London and the next General Election will come to define Labour’s relevance to 21st century politics.
Gaza is no longer the world’s biggest prison camp, it is a duck shoot. If you would prefer not to hide behind euphemisms, it is a death camp; where people who cannot leave face daily bombardment and where even ‘safe havens’.....
Delegates at the Labour Party conference in Manchester should be gentle with Gordon Brown. It will be his last as Labour leader and Prime Minister. Gordon is like a Damien Hirst sheep. Trapped in formaldehyde, he lacks the qualities needed for a bold.....
Gordon Brown’s declaration that he is about to review New Labour’s policies sent a flutter of excitement through the parliamentary press lobby. Was this to be the distinctive political lead everyone has been waiting for? Is it to be the genuine break with the Blairite.....
One trouble with the Parliamentary Labour Party is that it forgets even its own history. Not long ago, when the Iraq war became a self‐evident debacle, and the absence of weapons of mass destruction a haunting accusation, you could easily find a sense of political.......
The local government elections were not “a bad day for Labour”: they were a drubbing. To end up as the third party behind the Liberals, with our worst results since the 1960s sends out messages that can no longer be ignored.
In these days of strange associations what is the connection between Brendan Barber, General Secretary of the TUC, pop star Lily Allen and Bianca Jagger? The answer is that all three have written to Labour MPs urging them to back my amendment......
The Secretary of State shall make regulations within one year of the passing of this Act with the purpose of requiring designated energy suppliers to introduce a renewable energy tariff for specified producers of renewable energy.
05/03/08 - "Shock - New housing revelations"
On the 2nd March 2008, the Mail on Sunday ran a nonsense piece about Alan. They sent a journalist, Nick Pisa (sic) and a photographer out to get details of the family apartment in Italy. Having come back with the wrong photo and the wrong info, the Mail....
So, finally, Northern Rock has been brought into public ownership. Now the political fun begins. Recriminations are everywhere. I’m reminded of a ‘Peanuts’ cartoon in which Lucy offers consolation to a forlorn Charlie Brown.........
So, finally, Northern Rock has been brought into public ownership. Now the political fun begins. Recriminations are everywhere. I’m reminded of a ‘Peanuts’ cartoon in which Lucy offers consolation to a forlorn Charlie Brown.........
The vultures are circling over Downing Street. Labour’s defeat in the Glasgow East by‐election was a disaster. This was supposed to be Labour’s third safest seat in Scotland and our 25th safest in the whole of Britain. Such ‘meltdown’.....
The mauling Gordon Brown received, in his first Prime Minister’s Question time of the winter session, is far more significant than a single bad round in a long boxing match. His predecessor, Tony Blair, lost the public over the Iraq war.....
As new delegates start to make their way towards this year’s Labour Conference I offer this word of advice – never watch the Leader’s speech from within the hall. This isn’t because it frees you from the embarrassment of an endless and sycophantic standing ovation.
Interregnums are strange events. You never quite know where you are. If they follow a death, people at least know that they are entitled to mourn. Handovers of political power bring no such certainties. Labour MP's hover in clusters, uncertain about which.....
08/06/07 - "Friends disunited"
Of course, it could have happened to anyone. You go out for a meeting with old friends. You do a bit of business, a bit of catching up, swap a few reminiscences. And then, out of nowhere, up pops Dubya. “Yo, bro, whaddya know. I got an
army and we’re ready to go”
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): It is normal on these occasions for me to follow the Chancellor’s Budget statement and fill in the conventional gaps that I feel he has overlooked. I pay tribute to the Chancellor’s specific section........
13/03/07 - "Independent Article -Climate cheating"
Political leaders of all parties may not yet understand the urgency of responding to climate change, but at least they understand that at the next general election there will be
a race to turn carbon credits into electoral credits. Bless them.
13/03/07 - "Somewhere beyond soundbites"
My decision to leave parliament at the next election is driven by the same reasoning that took me into parliament 15 years ago. Then, as now, I had no particular interest in a career plan. All I wanted was to change the world. That is
still the plan.
26/01/07 "The other day upon the stair…’ – Blair’s leadership on Iraq"
Parliament’s first Iraq debate in three years, in government time, began in a fraud and ended as farce. As such, it was probably a fair summary of UK policy on the war and the occupation. The debate itself was dominated by three people who weren’t there.....
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): Will the Secretary of State reflect on his experience in his previous ministerial post in Northern Ireland, where the orphan funds of banks were subject to the same sort of argument?
There can’t be too many occasions ahead when Tony Blair presents himself before the Parliamentary Liaison Committee. These are parliament’s big hitters; the Chairs of all the major Select Committees. They are supposed to be the MPs who......
In the last days of Portuguese colonial occupation of Mozambique the retreating army left a number of legacies that the country would remember them for. They poured concrete down the lift shafts of tall apartment blocks and did the same to wells and drains.
21/11/2006 "Bush, Blair, and the end of an Empire"
As George W Bush looks down at the ruins of his presidency he must be wondering if there is anything more he could have screwed up. The answer is ‘yes’. And, reassuringly for most of us, he will almost certainly go on to do so........
Spare a thought for Tony Blair. Here is a man who is dead in he water; skewered by his friends more effectively than his
enemies could ever have dreamed of. Ever since he came to power, as leader, Blair has treated the Labour Party.....
21/07/2006 "Lebanon - The destruction of Democracy"
Those witnessing the hushed exchanges between Dubya and Son at the G8 summit must have thought they were watching a political spoof. “Hey pop, Canna do the Middle East roadshow before Conodoleeza gets there? Canna, canna, canna?......
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): Will the Secretary of State reflect on his experience in his previous ministerial post in Northern Ireland, where the orphan funds of banks were subject to the same sort of argument?
This week’s parliamentary debate on the Education and Inspections Bill could eave the Labour government in a huge mess, with frightening echoes of one of
the least edifying periods of our own history.
09/02/06 - "Education - Selling the kids"
There was a moment in the Celebrity Big Brother house when George Galloway MP had to pretend to be a cat, purring whilst lapping imaginary milk from the hands of fading 1970s actress, Rula Lenska. Many of his colleagues regarded this as the most deeply embarrassing act of self‐abasement to the absurd, that George took part in.
20/01/06 - "Celebrity big trouble"
Do you laugh or cry when a nation retreats from serous issues and descends into slapstick? Much of the press has been obsessed with the latest television series of Celebrity Big Brother. It was inevitable that they would focus on the folly of George Galloway...
01/01/06 - "A different Commonwealth"
On January 6th each year La Befana, a magical character in Italian folklore, brings children one of two gifts. If they have been good in the previous year, she leaves them sweets. If not, they get charcoal. Looking out across the hills to Siena.......
09/12/05 - "When the chat show ends"
It would be easy to caricature the
change in Conservative Party
leadership in slapstick terms. The
arrival of David Cameron at the
Despatch Box was more of a love-in
than a clash of convictions it was
Punch and Judy being replaced by
Richard and Judy....
It comes as something when it fell to Israel’s chief justice to remind Britain that it is the duty of the justice system to “protect democracy both from terrorism and from the means the state wants to use to fight terrorism.”
02/11/05 - Terrorism Bill
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): The opening paragraph begins in a fairly straightforward way: "In the Lenin Barracks in Barcelona, the day before I joined the militia, I saw an Italian militiaman standing in front of the officers' table."
Of course anyone could have mistaken Walter Wolfgang for Muqtada al‐Sadr. They would probably have had to have been on an alcoholic bender for the preceding 5 days, but technically, the confusion of identity is possible. After all, the 82 year old, lifetime peace...
23/09/05 - "Goodbye Mr Blair"
Be nice to him. This will be Tony Blair's last Labour.
Conference as undisputed Leader. It will be full of bluff and bravado: grandiose claims about an unfinished agenda of New Labour reforms; resolute statements about work still to be done.....
16/09/05 - "When New Labour runs out of fuel"
The biggest legacy of the Blair‐Bush era is fear and insecurity. One hint of a trucker’s protest about fuel prices and the British public laid siege to petrol stations all around the country. True, it had none of the carnage of social collapse in New Orleans...
Jean Charles de Menezes. The name lived in relative obscurity and will slip away, in similar terms, over the coming weeks. It does, however, sum up the futility of much
that comes to be symbolised by 'the war on terror'
When world leaders get together at the G8 summit no one will have a bad word to say about Jeffrey Sachs. The economics professor responsible for the UN’s anti‐poverty report, ‘Investing in Development’, has asked rich nations to.....
11/05/05 - "St Anthony and the half blood project"
I was half way through the latest Harry Potter book when the press ran the story saying that, at the end of his premiership, Tony Blair planned to lead some sort of global, inter‐faith initiative. It was described as the ‘clean break’ option from politics.
11/05/05 - "Leading Labour"
I no longer know whether my attempt to turn a derelict shell into a house that generates 50% more energy than it consumes is a folly, a vision, an obsession…or all three. I may now more when it is finished in the summer. To make sense of it may require a different....
25/04/05 - "Silencing the lambs"
Two items in the breakfast news trapped me between the bizarre and the surreal. Norwich, it appears, is the e‐bay capital of Britain. More people in the city trade goods through the internet than anywhere else in the country.
15/03/05 - Budget Debate 2005
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): At the end of every Budget debate, Members stream out of the Chamber and are greeted by those in the press, who want to know whether or not we thought it a good Budget. Usually.....
18/02/05 - Making the pledge
This is a time to explore some important contradictions. When I went off to Rome 's anti‐war rally on the anniversary of 9/11, the British press were obsessed with something else. Blair had just appointed Alan Milburn to a Cabinet.....
26/11/04 - "Gordon and the Gekko fallacy"
There was a time when the Chancellor of the Exchequer was a firebrand of Labour radicalism. Gordon Brown, then, was unafraid to make the case for economic interventionism, universal entitlements, and an internationalism rooted....
In the modern world, democracy gets killed off more in parmesan shavings that para‐military coups. Little bits get sliced off the system of public accountability and, before you know it, social authoritarianism has replaced social
democracy; the democratic cheese has.....
Ogden Nash's poem wasn't written about the Parliamentary Labour Party's meeting that I had just come out of, but the words kept
running through my head. In what came over as an infantile gesture, MP's who raised the issue of Iraq.....
We should not kid ourselves about Iraq. In has an army of occupation, in charge of transitional administration. Military t seek to deliver pacification but not peace. We should
not kid ourselves about Iraq......
This is a time to explore some important contradictions. When I went off to Rome 's anti‐war rally on the anniversary of 9/11, the British press were obsessed with something else. Blair had just appointed Alan Milburn to a Cabinet post that will take charge of Labour's next...
Parliament has grown tired of the war on Iraq . Downing St is desperate to move on elsewhere. America lurches from one panic to another at the mere mention of a possible terrorist attack. When the ‘evidence' used to throw the USA.....
It is Tony Blair's anniversary. Ten years ago he took over as leader of the Labour Party. Shortly afterwards he and I set off on a round Britain tour. He was championing the case for modernising' the Labour Party by abandoning its‘
commitments to common ownership.
18/06/04 "Party games"
Downing Street 's response to last week's election results come as a surprise to all but he most bullish of New Labour acolytes. An important sea change is taking place in society, with tides that will pull us all into uncertain waters.
16/06/04 - "The politic of patronage"
Here is the irony. I've spent the best part of the last year arguing for taxes on saturated fats, sugar and salt, and I could barely get any part of the press to take an interest. Then, one weekend in Portugal and everyone in the press anted to talk about obesity.....
10/06/04 - "The day we all lost"
I am going to give today a miss. News coverage will no doubt be dominated by makeover explanations of the EU election results in Britain and the Reagan funeral in America . I can already feel the nausea of organised dishonesty beginning to
overwhelm me.
Much of the recent ‘paper talk' about Tony Blair's leadership of the Labour Party has lurched between the surreal and the silly. Would he survive the Loch Fyne conspiracy? Is he more vulnerable to a flour attack from Fathers for Justice.
By the day, the situation in the Middle East slides down a spiral of despair. Iraq is a mess. The Sharon Administration turns Israel into a rogue state. President Bush begins the trials of foot soldiers involved in photographing or conducting the torture and humiliation.....
Long after the street celebrations in Baghdad have ended a more awkward reality will dawn upon the international community. 'Victory' over Iraq will not bring an end to war. It will just move the conflict on to different terrain.
17/03/04 - Budget Debate 2004
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South): I am very pleased to be called to speak on the first day of the Budget debate, and I begin by paying a couple of tributes, the first of which is to the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) for.....
17/03/04 - Viva Espana
I would love to be a fly on the wall at the first meeting between the new Spanish Home Secretary, Snr Jose Bono, and the British Prime Minister. In respect of the war on Iraq, Snr Bono is on record as describing Mr Blair as “un gilipollas integral”.
This is a difficult, turbulent period for ASLEF, but one it will come through with dignity. As with the Labour Party, the ask will be to re‐build around the strength and principles of
its membership. Central to this is trust, openness and accountability.
October 2003 - "Labour Party Conference"
It says a lot about the state of British politics that just when you get a Labour conference hungry for policy change, the
press become obsessed with leadership change. This is the politics of Pop Idol – adore the winner, abuse the rest....
June 2003 "Labour Party reshuffle"
For a moment Ian Duncan Smith huffed and puffed about the Cabinet reshuffle and the planned demise of the Lord Chancellor's office as though he had found a real political issue. Some Labour members joined in the disquiet about not knowing where.....
07/05/03 - Foundation Hospitals
I am deeply concerned that the proposal to establish foundation hospitals will itself destroy the foundations the NHS was built upon. It will create a premier league of asset rich hospitals surrounded by a nationwide league of hospitals.....
03/05/03 "Independent - Letter to Tony"
Tony, The council election results weren’t sent to spoil your birthday celebrations, just to change them. There’s no point in sticking candles in a cake that’s past its sell by date, so why waste time on a re‐
branding of New Labour?
May 2003 "The Emporers no clothes"
Behind the scenes, something of enormous importance is happening. ‘The Project' is dying. The Third Way is falling apart. And in it's death throws of credibility, Downing Street is lurching towards ever more reckless commitments to
corporate greed.
09/04/03 "George Galloway"
Rumours have been running around parliament and the press that there will be a move to suspend George Galloway from the PLP. You don't have to be a signed member of George's fan club to know that displacing him over opposition to the war in Iraq.....
So, fed up with waiting, angry at being unable to bully or bribe the UN into supporting a second resolution, George Bush has launched a war on Iraq. He intended to do so all along. Forget that the Weapons Inspectors offered to deliver.....
It was, and still is, the most powerful rallying call of the post‐war generation. “We, the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind…
Parliament’s debate on Iraq will be caught between two cynical extremes. Saddam Hussain will do whatever it takes to avoid a war. George Bush is no less determined to do
whatever it takes to avoid a peace.
The latest opinion polls show that British people oppose a war on Iraq by a ratio of 4:1. The government’s media campaigners have failed to make a case for war and Downing St’s ‘dossier on Saddam’ has been seen for what it as.....
'The time for military action has not yet arisen. However, there is no doubt at all that the development of weapons of mass destruction by Saddam Hussein poses a severe threat not just to the region, but to the wider world…After 11 September......
January 2002 - "Silence Isn't Peace"
The Afghan war is over, unless you happen to live in Afghanistan. Day 100 of the war brought with it another round of bombings that the villagers of Zhawar have become accustomed to.
Whatever the press briefings have been saying, Britain has not yet declared war on Afghanistan, nor should we do so. Every day that I wake to the news that no bombing has taken place is a celebration of the restraining role Tony Blair as played with the US....
The war in Afghanistan has achieved little and understood less. Alan's opposition to it, and his formation of 'Labour Against the War', is an attempt to set a different agenda to peace and security issues. None of this is about being 'soft' on terrorism.
The war in Afghanistan has achieved little and understood less. Alan's opposition to it, and his formation of 'Labour Against the War', is an attempt to set a different agenda to peace and security issues. None of this is about being 'soft' on terrorism.
America's biggest, non‐nuclear bombs are now being dropped on Afghanistan. These so‐called 'daisy cutters' have s little to do with gardening as they do with understating of terrorism.
'
The euro is living up to the highest expectations of the
economists who advocated it, and Britain is missing out'. I almost cried with laughter when I read these concluding lines in last week's Guardian article by Chris Huhne MEP. This may be the official view.....
Alan Simpson: Partly because I think the war is wrong full stop. It's just the wrong way of seeking to track down terrorists and bring them to justice. The second is that I am really fearful that we're sitting on the dge of a humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan.....
I am extremely angry at the government's wretched support for President Bush's warmongering approach to international relations. I was tempted to resign my membership of the Party, but have
decided that it is not me who ought to go.
