Young progressives Articles

Sitting in the audience at the Progress manifesto conference last weekend was like seeing a potted history of Labour in government since 1997. Speakers included former ministers, a former special adviser, Labour members of Parliament, a cabinet minister, Labour PPC and dozens of Labour activists and Progress members.

An article on ConservativeHome over the weekend claimed there will be an “historic increase” in the number of women and ethnic minority Conservative MPs following the general election.

With such a statement you would expect the increase to be significantly more, or at least matching, that which Labour achieved in 1997, when 101 women MPs were elected. In fact, they predict that with a Conservative majority of one, there will be 61 Conservative women MPs elected.

The Conservative Party: from Thatcher to Cameron, by Tim Bale

If a future historian wants to know why either David Cameron lost the 2010 general election, or, more likely, why the Cameron government was such an abject failure, a clue can be found on p21 of Tim Bale’s new book about the Tories. Bale writes: ‘Rather than re-engineering his party, as Blair (and to a lesser extent Kinnock and Smith) did, the Tory leader has only restyled it.’

I don’t tweet. Deal with it.

Apparently people can’t deal with it. It doesn’t matter that I have five email accounts, write a blog, text faster than you speak, obsessively Facebook (or Stalkbook.)…no. Just not good enough these days. Why this obsession with Twitter? Is it because the next election will be the first one in the UK where new media is likely to play a large part?