ALEX HALL interviews PAUL HOLDEN, whose bombshell book uses leaked documents to expose how the Starmer faction used systematic dishonesty to seize power and reopen the door to the corrupting ecosystem of corporate lobbying and sleaze
Latest editorial
What a crock!
SOLOMON HUGHES explains the logic behind the ‘Ming vase strategy’ that’s firing up the thinking of Starmer and his gang of centrists
HOLLOW: Keir Starmer
The recent calls to strip Michelle Mone of her peerage after she was caught scamming the public for £122 million should reinvigorate the longstanding progressive demand to completely abolish the entire undemocratic, corrupt relic, writes ELLIOT TONG
As gold hits $4,000 per ounce, soaring from only $250 back in 2001, the US national debt has reached $37 trillion — it’s all about to come crashing down, warns JOHN ELLISON, which our leaders would have known had they only studied Marx’s magnum opus Capital
Now at 115,000 members and in some polls level with Labour in terms of public support, CHRIS JARVIS looks at the factors behind the rapid rise of the Greens, internal and external
Witnessing a war of words at a meeting on tackling militarism at The World Transformed, BEN COWLES spoke to a union rep who is organising against war from inside the arms industry itself, to hear about worker-led solutions to ending weapons production
FRANCISCO DOMINGUEZ, ROGER D HARRIS and JOHN PERRY contrast Trump’s warships and F-35 fighters threatening Venezuela with the $20bn bailout for Milei’s collapsed economy, all enabled by a highly ideological IMF
“MING vase strategy” is another pundit cliche — like “big-tent strategy” or “grown-ups back in charge” — which tries using recently made up SW1 “common-sense” lore to narrow political possibilities.
The theory is Keir Starmer is applying a “Ming vase strategy,” which means avoiding risk at all costs so Labour’s poll lead doesn’t smash to the ground.
The phrase first surfaces in 1996, when the Guardian reported Roy Jenkins likened Tony Blair’s attitude to his poll lead like “a man carrying a delicate Ming vase across a polished museum floor: one slip and it crashes.”
Similar stories
Who you ask and how you ask matter, as does why you are asking — the history of opinion polls shows they are as much about creating opinions as they are about recording them, writes socialist historian KEITH FLETT
PAUL DONOVAN relishes a fascinating exploration of the leading lights of the Labour right in the 1970s
Aslef general secretary MICK WHELAN speaks to Ben Chacko about rail renationalisation, the Employment Rights Bill and why we shouldn’t write off this Labour government
Supposedly top journalists and commentators are suddenly reversing their earlier proclamations that our Labour PM is terrific, and are now saying he’s crap. SOLOMON HUGHES has a shrewd idea why