Yawn. That's all it induces, as your eyes doggedly scan the text, procuring the scarce semantics conveyed by the tiresome punchlines and lifeless descriptions. The text, exactly? Ed Miliband's latest interview in the New Statesman, of course. If, in some hypothetical, fitting theatrical realm, the Conservative Party was to secure the role of King Claudius, appointing from its considerable array of ministerial actors, the cursed Polonius would no doubt be assumed by Ed Miliband. The Labour leader as ever, offers little in the way of ingenuity, contradicts himself occasionally and intellectually, turns in speechless. Yet it seems as if Miliband cannot even summon the political fight to defend his own party. Labour's legacy in power remains under perpetual Conservative attack; verbal artillery decrying that ghastly, murderous, torturous, massacring, horrible, contemptible, foul budget deficit remains live, the offensive driven forward by battle cries of irresponsibility and...
They just never learn. " The swiftly changing paradigms of the political world pose a vital question for the future of the Labour Party ; evolve to incorporate new, radical ideas and provide a visionary, specific future for the British electorate with which the public may engage and participate within, or simply wither away to political insignificance, fighting the Conservatives over tiny fractions of ideological battleground. Whether or not Labour as a political party has the capacity and internal will to evolve in such a way however, is an entirely different question altogether. "
1989, August. The Stone Roses step out onto the stage at the Empress Ballroom, Blackpool. The Berlin Wall is soon to fall. Margaret Thatcher’s reign is wilting and barely stumbling about on its last legs. Young people have flocked to Blackpool in droves, from all across the north: this is their band and the gig, a 3000-man sellout, is the group’s biggest to date. MANCHESTER IN THE AREA WE’RE INTERNATIONAL WE’RE CONTINENTAL… BUT WE’LL SETTLE FOR GLASGOW screams Ian Brown as he walks on, spinning a yoyo in one-hand, hurling ice-pops into the crowd with the other. Whatever it means, it fits. The Roses embody all that seems somehow hopeful, young and brave in a country that is crawling out of the decade much more tired and much more slow than it steamed in. I want to see him dead. I want to shoot him -Brown on Prince Charles, 1989 Things didn’t quite work out like that, and the common sense is that the Roses bottled it. Alex Niven talks of how the progressi...
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