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No rest for the wicked – Thursday made a Remain vote all the more crucial

on May 07, 2016

2015 election Brexit Ed Miliband England EU referendum Euroscepticism Jacques Delors Jeremy Corbyn Labour In for Britain London mayor Sadiq Khan Scotland social Europe Zac Goldsmith

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Elliot Bidgood: Hackney, London, United Kingdom; Currently a research and comms consultant with a consultancy for not-for-profits, in addition to freelance work (though I blog here strictly in a personal capacity - all views are my own). Active Labour Party member since 2007 and now belong to Hackney North & Stoke Newington CLP. Social democrat, Fabians & previously a research volunteer for the Labour Finance & Industry Group. Research interests include civil society, health, localism, business, US politics, the EU and political reform. Americaphile and borderline Twitter addict

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Book: The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford

I started reading The Undercover Economist last year, and though it took me a while to get round to finishing, it largely didn’t disappoint. In it, economist and Financial Times columnist Tim Harford seeks to put economics in everyday context, explaining theories in straightforward terms and giving an eye-opening account of how various actors behave in the marketplace. My copy was actually an amended edition, re-published to respond to the financial crisis of 2008 (the original, published in 2005, instead focused more heavily on the Dotcom bubble).

Dear Jeremy - I'm a Labour member, but I'm not the one you need to hear more from

Jeremy Corbyn is outlining plans for a “democratic revolution” in Labour that will give individual members more say over party policy. This will include online ballots and a review of the powers of Labour’s National Executive Committee (currently elected every two years by party members like me). The measures would therefore move things away from the status quo, whereby official party policy is mostly decided by a mix of the party leadership, the National Policy Forum (also elected by members) and motions at our annual conferences. They also fit into the broader vogue to open up democracy and shift away from top-down representative systems that we’ve seen in recent years, which I’ve at times been favourable to (I’ve blogged in support of recall for MPs , the EU referendum and electing Britain’s EU commissioner , for example). However, I must say that speaking as one of the rank-and-file party members Jeremy is offering to empower, I actually believe this particular refor...

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