Briefings

Patriot Games

Clarke's Comment This week the Labour Party inadvertently revealed plans to present itself as more patriotic in a document leaked to The Guardian. Embracing the flag has been a tactic employed throughout the ages by parties, politicians and leaders in democracies and dictatorships alike, but not very often by the good ones and not always with the best of intentions.In...

Published on 05 Feb 2021

Reality Bites

Clarke's Comment There are moments in film where a protagonist comes to a sudden, awful realisation. There is the moment in The Sixth Sense when Bruce Willis realises he's dead (late spoiler alert) or in The Others, where Nicole Kidman realises that she and her kids are actually ghosts, haunting their own home, when Charlton Heston realises that the planet of...

Published on 29 Jan 2021

When the game's not worth the candle.

Clarke's Comment Much of the planet breathed a sigh of relief on Wednesday as President Biden was sworn in, in some style and without incident. The levels of schadenfreude in the TV broadcasts of the inauguration were not always obvious, tempered as they were by the shadow of Trump and the fear that this current crisis might not be quite over...

Published on 21 Jan 2021

A Year In Renew - pt.II

Clarke's Comment Apologies for the long delay, but here is the second part of ‘A Year in Renew’ – July to December. If you have missed any of our weekly briefings, you can catch up right here. July Renew’s leader Julie Girling steps down after a year at the helm but remains with us on our board and as a...

Published on 15 Jan 2021

A Year In Renew - pt.I

Clarke's Comment This is part 1 of our 2 part review of the year, 'A Year In Renew' January Renew attends the Grassroots for Europe assembly at Westminster Central Hall and watches the likes of Dominic Grieve and Will Hutton speak eloquently about the battles of the past and the fights to come. Press officer James Dilley and Deputy Leader James Clarke begin...

Published on 24 Dec 2020

It's a Wonderful Life - UK, (2020)

Clarke's Comment Last week we discussed the endless brinkmanship in the EU trade deal that left Johnson and his Government with a choice between a no-deal that trashes the economy and a thin deal that fails to satisfy the extreme eurosceptics in parliament.Since then, it appears that progress has been made, with quiet rumours emerging that Johnson has agreed a compromise...

Published on 17 Dec 2020

Deal or No Deal?

Clarke's Comment This week, 2017's Owen Jones took time off from his record-breaking #Corbyn4PM campaign to blame remainers for Brexit. Staggering but true. He is not the first to try and pull off this outlandish trick, but may be the most objectionable. The central thesis is that, in a parallel universe, if remainers had only been more conciliatory, the UK might...

Published on 10 Dec 2020

Eggs, Jabs and Sleaze

Clarke's Comment This week, the excellent news on vaccines and approvals was the cause of a mini-truce between Keir Starmer and Boris Johnson at Prime Minister's Question Time, as both leaders praised the scientists and regulators for the fast-tracked roll-out of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. The mini-truce lasted about 12 seconds before Johnson reverted to form, attacking the opposition for opposing...

Published on 03 Dec 2020

Stop That Racket!

Clarke's Comment At a certain level, all government is just an extremely sophisticated racket. We see it clearly in kleptocracies and dictatorships, less so in mature democracies, but nonetheless all governments exist on a theoretical racketeering spectrum. I say this not to rubbish the concept of government in general or the UK Government in particular, but to underline how precious a functioning democracy is,...

Published on 26 Nov 2020

The Truth About Cake

Clarke's Comment “Our policy is having our cake and eating it." "My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it." “We are Pro-secco but by no means anti-pasto”. - Quotes from the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Recent good news about working vaccines, the defeat of Trump and the expulsion of Dominic Cummings has thrown...

Published on 19 Nov 2020

BRIEFINGS

Patriot Games

Reality Bites

When the game's not worth the candle.

A Year In Renew - pt.II

A Year In Renew - pt.I

It's a Wonderful Life - UK, (2020)

Deal or No Deal?

Eggs, Jabs and Sleaze

Stop That Racket!

The Truth About Cake