It was clear from the first announcement of the channel that GB News was never going to be aimed at me. So when TheArticle asked me to write about it, I thought about how best to approach it. I want to be fair and balanced to a project that I consider to have a biased slant, looking at it respectfully as the latest entry into the broadcast news canon.
So having felt that GB News isn’t for me, I tried to think about who it was for, and what they might think of it. GB News is largely for people who agree with Andrew Neil’s opening monologue, that other news outlets were too infected by “wokeness” to cover the issues they cared about or to put their side of the debate.
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One of the interesting thing about interviews now largely being conducted by Zoom is that little insight you get into the person you’re talking to and the space they live in. Sometimes it’s a plain wall or a strategic piece of artwork, sometimes a bookshelf with all the very clever titles on display.
As is befitting for the co-host of QueenPod, Sooz Kempner is speaking to me from in front of a giant, wall-spanning flag depicting Freddie Mercury in his classic ‘fist raised to the audience’ pose.
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What is a worker? It feels like this should be easy to define, but it has become almost as contested a term as working class. This week, a Private Members Bill will be introduced in the House of Lords giving equality of status to all workers, whether classed as employees, contractors or self-employed. Tony Burke sets out the details.
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An independent panel of experts has recommended that Tory MP Rob Roberts be suspended for six weeks following accusations of sexual misconduct from a former member of his staff. The panel has heard and dismissed an appeal from Mr Roberts against a decision made by the Parliamentary Commissioner for
Standards.
UK members of the East and South East Asian (ESEA) community have been left traumatised in the wake of a vast increase in racially motivated attacks since the start of the pandemic.
According to a recent Ipsos Mori poll found that 1 in 7 people avoid people of Chinese origin or appearance and reported attacks on the ESEA community have increased by 7
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RWriting in the New Statesman this week, former prime minister Tony Blair said, “the Labour Party needs complete deconstruction and reconstruction. Nothing less will do.” His vision seizes on the challenges posed by the technological industrial revolution as “tailor-made for the progressive cause”, and urges “reason and moderation” as weapons to resolve the culture wars which are ravaging the Left. Keir Starmer’s party of 2021 is confusing “abiding values with outdated mechanisms”, he writes. Is he right? Can anything less than a back-to-the-drawing-board approach save Labour?
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We're about to start hugging again. The London Mayor has announced a summer of fun. He won't be the only one longing to get a bit of joy into our lives.
This country, like the rest of the world, has been through hell over the last 14 months. The desperate desire for a break, for a release, for a bit of hedonism is tangible. We aren’t yet ready to look back soberly on the pandemic and the response to it. For now, we just want to forget our troubles and get happy.
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Seventy per cent of the public would like to see the controversial practice of ‘hire and fire’ a new poll from Survation and Unite the Union finds.
The practice allows bullying bosses to rip up established contracts and replace then with inferior ones.
This works either by forcing workers to accept new contracts by threatening redundancy if they don’t, or by firing workers and rehiring on reduced terms and conditions.
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Sixty MPs and Peers have written to the Secretary for Culture, Media and Sport Oliver Dowden to support moves towards fan ownership of football clubs.
The letter, which was cross-party, called for last week’s failed move for clubs to form a “European super league” to become a catalyst for real change in how UK football is run.
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New revelations about Matt Hancock’s ties to a firm that was awarded NHS contracts were revealed last night (Thursday).
The Health Secretary was revealed to have at least a 15% stake in his sister’s company Topwood Limited. Topwood was awarded NHS England contracts in 2019 – Mr Hancock was Health and Social Care Secretary at the time but failed to declare an interest. They were later added to the NHS Shared Businesses framework for “confidential waste destruction and disposal” while he was the Secretary of State. Again, no interest was declared.
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The sun is starting to shine and lockdown is starting to ease for what is probably the last time. People are meeting again. I’ve seen lots of friends, safely and outdoors. It feels wonderful.
The vaccine rollout is going well and these shots in arms for individuals have acted as a shot in the arm for the country. We’re in an increasingly good mood. The people on Walthamstow Marshes with me yesterday were all smiling at each other. There were a lot of us, feeling good about feeling good. Unlike last summer it did not feel fragile. It felt like the beginning of the end.
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The Labour leadership have supported the government sending commissioners into the City of Liverpool following the shocking Caller report into corruption there. As someone who has edited more than a few reports on local government in my time, I can tell you that they are rarely as blockbuster or as gripping as this one. Labour had no choice but to follow suit. But the important question is what they do next. Accepting the commissioners has to be the first line of a whole new approach to local government by the Labour Party – led from the top but delivered at all levels of the party.
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