After Delhi, stand by for a Poland/Ukraine fiasco

The piece of mine appears in the First Post.

Neil Clark: Let’s make sport the focus of international tournaments - not the location

The host of a major international sports event is behind schedule with its preparations and doubts have been expressed as to whether the tournament will be able to go ahead as planned.

No, I'm not referring to Delhi, desperately trying to get things ready for next month's Commonwealth Games, but to Ukraine, co-host of the 2012 European football championships.

You can read the whole of the piece here.

Ed Miliband left-wing? They're having a laugh

This article of mine appears in today's First Post.

Neil Clark: The portrayal of Ed Miliband as a leftie shows how far to the right Britain has travelled.

According to his critics, he's a dangerous left-wing radical who, if he ever became prime minister, would take Britain back to the Socialist 1970s.


According to his supporters, he's the man who will lead Labour away from Blairism and reconnect the party with its core supporters and traditional values.

Both his detractors and supporters are in agreement that Ed Miliband - who could well be Labour leader when the results of the party ballot are revealed this weekend - is the candidate for 'change'. Miliband himself has as his campaign slogan: 'Call for Change'.

But if we look beyond the rhetoric and the sound-bites, a very different picture emerges.

You can read the whole of the article here.

A party's soul is sold

This column of mine appears in the Morning Star.

Neil Clark explains how ‘Orange Book’ Liberals betray their roots.

As a big fan of the classic 1970s TV drama Upstairs, Downstairs, I was delighted to read that three brand new episodes of the programme are to be broadcast this autumn, with plans for a new series to be shown next year.

Upstairs, Downstairs told the story of the inhabitants of 165 Eaton Place in Belgravia, London, focusing on both the toffs "upstairs" and the lives of the servants "downstairs."


The original programme, which was screened from 1971-5, covered the years 1903-30. It was a period of enormous social change during which those "downstairs" made important social advances and the old class system, so rigid in the Victorian era, began to weaken.


Master of the house Richard Bellamy, played by David Langton, was a paternalistic Tory MP who had much sympathy with the reforming Liberal government which swept to power in 1905. It was that same Liberal government of Campbell-Bannerman, Asquith, Lloyd George and Winston Churchill which laid the foundations of the modern welfare state.


How ironic, then, that exactly 100 years on, it's the Liberals who, together with their Tory coalition allies, are working to destroy the welfare state their predecessors helped to establish.

The elusive Mr Cameron: how long can the ploy last?

This article of mine appears in today's First Post.

Contrast Cameron's first months in office with Tony Blair's in 1997. In the summer of 1997, the new British Prime Minister was here, there and everywhere, announcing new government initiatives on what seemed to be a daily basis, hob-nobbing with 'Cool Britannia' pop stars at Number 10 and stealing the show with his reading from 1 Corinthians 13 at Princess Diana's memorial service.

This summer we've seen plenty of Nick Clegg, deputy PM, of George Osborne, the Chancellor, of Foreign Secretary William Hague and of Business Secretary Vince Cable. But of the man who is supposed to be running the country, we have seen remarkably little. Dave has been almost as elusive as Mrs Mainwaring in repeats of Dad’s Army.

You can read the whole of the piece here.

Diane Abbott: Nationalise to end Rail Chaos

It would cost nothing to bring back train operations into public hands. The Government would have two options: either it would not renew the franchises when they expire or, as the companies got into financial difficulties, they could be taken over. Additionally private-sector train operators receive a huge direct subsidy from the Government.

This is just subsidising their profits. It would be cheaper and in the public interest to operate the trains directly. The current mess doesn’t serve the general public, the taxpayer or the rail commuter. The Labour Party that I would lead would start listening to the public for the first time in a long time. On the railways, as on other issues, I would introduce policies that made sense instead of running scared of big-money interests.

You can read the whole of Labour leadership hopeful Diane Abbott’s great Sunday Express article here. What a disgrace that none of the other candidates supports renationalisation.

PS: If there's anyone out there who is still not convinced about renationalising the railways, please read this.

Temper, temper: Nick Clegg shows the pressure

This piece of mine appears in the First Post.

Neil Clark: If you think the Lib Dem leader is struggling now, just wait for next month’s party conference.

Nothing fails like success; nothing is so defeated as yesterday's triumphant cause. The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Phyllis McGinley wasn't writing about Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats when she penned those lines - but they sum up perfectly what has happened to Britain's third party and its leader since its breakthrough election 'success' in May.

Then the champagne corks were popping, as the Liberals entered a peacetime British government for the first time since the 1930s. Three months on and it's a very different story.

You can read the whole of the article here.

Tony Blair is a Banker

I always said he was....

You can read all about Tony’s latest little money-spinner here.