Tribune – Comment, news and reviews from Britain's democratic left

This year’s general election is likely to be a game-changer for the Labour Party, win, draw or lose. It is implausible that it will continue as the broadly continuous institution born of Liberal and socialist parents and which came of age in parliamentary form in 1906.

The prospect of a new year, though essentially nothing more than a calendric method of order, is imbued with a surfeit of emotional hope and resolution. In this increasingly secular celebration of the new gods of consumerism the period of greetings, good tidings, gluttony, family joy (or not) and lonely misery that we call Christmas there is a break in the march of time from where we can view Christmas past and future.

Bullingdon Boy David Cameron’s suffering that congenital political disease known as a thin skin. The upper-class warrior who’d shower public handouts on his rich friends – inheritance tax cuts, married couple allowances favouring the wealthy, abolishing Labour’s 50p top rate – doesn’t like to be laughed at. He takes himself very seriously and demands that others do the same.

In the words of President Woodrow Wilson, those who work in the public service believe “that to work for the common good is the greatest creed”.  In the past 12 years, it is difficult to detect any sign that the Government adhered to this belief. In fact, “reform” has been a rod with which those [...]

It speaks volumes about the depths to which Labour’s collective despair had sunk that a single opinion poll proffering the slimmest chances of a hung Parliament – not even a victory – at the next election should raise the spirits of MPs and activists.

In a belated decision, made largely on the basis of political pragmatism rather than moral principle, Gordon Brown has signalled that he is ready to contemplate an end to digging of the hole that is Afghanistan.

Any summit billed as a meeting to determine the future of the planet and humanity is certain to deliver the single inevitable result of hyperbole: disappointment. The deflation of expectations of what will come out of Copenhagen next month started early and scepticism about whether it would all be a waste of time has crept in.

Introducing American-style primaries into British politics would be a great way of revitalising the Labour party, says David Lammy

The prospect of a President of Europe and what the role is, or should be, has been overwhelmed by whether or not Britain’s former Prime Minister Tony Blair wants, or will get, the job. There has been little or no debate on the purpose of the post, because the Lisbon treaty which would create it is so opaque about its definition, as so many parts of such European Union documents tend, deliberately, to be.

After BNP leader Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time, Joe Holder explains why the BBC got it wrong