This weekend, the NEU holds a special conference to debate changing its approach to organising teaching assistants, which a 2017 TUC agreement forbids. General secretary DANIEL KEBEDE outlines the choices before delegates
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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
Evidence to peers from medical leaders, patient safety officials and the children’s commissioner has intensified fears that the Bill’s safeguards are inadequate, writes ADAM JAMES POLLOCK
In the first of a series of interviews with leaders of progressive parties in Wales ahead of the May 7 Senedd election DAVID NICHOLSON talks to Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth
Anyone who criticises those in power in Kenya risks their freedom or worse. The brutal abduction of Booker Omole marks a new escalation in a country sliding toward authoritarian rule, says MARC VANDEPITTE
Statement of the World Peace Council
“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.”
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