alan johnson Articles

Collins helps make Labour fit for the 21st century I attended my first Labour party annual conference 30 years ago. I was the 17-year-old delegate from Enfield Southgate CLP, conference was in Blackpool, and Neil Kinnock had been party leader for just a year. At that...

If Clement Attlee was so great, then why is This Boy so sad? Alan Johnson’s memoir – out in paperback later this week – is a book of almost unbearable sorrow. Reading it was like unpacking a series of heavy crates; I kept having to stop and take a breath every few...

Let's complete John Smith's unfinished business As we commemorate the centenary of the start of the first world war, it is ironic that the Labour party is looking again at a structure that largely emerged from that period. When the war began the party existed as a...

Having opened the door to reform of the link, there is no going back ‘Clause IV moment’ has become a synonym for a deliberate decisive shift in a policy which positively transforms a party’s fortunes. The main myth of Tony Blair’s ‘Clause IV moment’ was that it was a...