Phil Edwards
@philedwards.bsky.social
"Research fellow" (i.e. retired) at MMU; still writing. Interests: international law, jurisprudence (mainly Kelsen). Other interests: folksong, real ale, the Left, cinema, Bowie, Aickman. Blogs at gapingsilence.wordpress.com and ohgoodale.wordpress.com .
I don't know what the best time would have been, not least because - however well Labour were doing before he said it - he would immediately have been monstered & Labour's polling would have crashed. But somebody with a bit of authority needed to say it, and now nobody has. And
[waves at All This]
[waves at All This]
January 16, 2026 at 5:22 PM
I don't know what the best time would have been, not least because - however well Labour were doing before he said it - he would immediately have been monstered & Labour's polling would have crashed. But somebody with a bit of authority needed to say it, and now nobody has. And
[waves at All This]
[waves at All This]
I don't know what the best time would have been for Jeremy Corbyn to say "I'm not a Zionist. I'm sorry if that makes it hard for some people to support the Labour Party, but I think it's important to say that anti-Zionism is a legitimate political position, one held by many Jewish people"...
January 16, 2026 at 5:20 PM
I don't know what the best time would have been for Jeremy Corbyn to say "I'm not a Zionist. I'm sorry if that makes it hard for some people to support the Labour Party, but I think it's important to say that anti-Zionism is a legitimate political position, one held by many Jewish people"...
<sad talk-box noise>
January 16, 2026 at 5:08 PM
<sad talk-box noise>
(It's possible it was more than a few years - I may be condensing 10 years into 5 retrospectively. But there was definitely a 'before' (prices around £25K, rising 1-2%/year) and an 'after' (prices around £250K, rising 1-2%/year).)
January 16, 2026 at 5:05 PM
(It's possible it was more than a few years - I may be condensing 10 years into 5 retrospectively. But there was definitely a 'before' (prices around £25K, rising 1-2%/year) and an 'after' (prices around £250K, rising 1-2%/year).)
There was very high housing price inflation for a few years - mid-80s around London, late 80s up here - and when the music stopped the properties that had been ~£25K were ~£200K. House price inflation has been moderate ever since then, but that 80s/90s hike put mortgages out of many people's reach.
January 16, 2026 at 5:02 PM
There was very high housing price inflation for a few years - mid-80s around London, late 80s up here - and when the music stopped the properties that had been ~£25K were ~£200K. House price inflation has been moderate ever since then, but that 80s/90s hike put mortgages out of many people's reach.
I was unclear. In 1982 you could get a one-bedroom flat in South London for under £30K; soon after that prices went crazy. Prices were slower to move in Manchester, so in 1987 you could still get a 3-bed semi for under £30K; soon after that, though, prices went crazy.
January 16, 2026 at 5:00 PM
I was unclear. In 1982 you could get a one-bedroom flat in South London for under £30K; soon after that prices went crazy. Prices were slower to move in Manchester, so in 1987 you could still get a 3-bed semi for under £30K; soon after that, though, prices went crazy.
Difficult to be in his position with the actual Home Secretary breathing down your neck, but this is a hell of a shame.
A longish but worthwhile account of what's been going on is here:
whispering.media/the-maccabi-...
A longish but worthwhile account of what's been going on is here:
whispering.media/the-maccabi-...
January 16, 2026 at 3:34 PM
Difficult to be in his position with the actual Home Secretary breathing down your neck, but this is a hell of a shame.
A longish but worthwhile account of what's been going on is here:
whispering.media/the-maccabi-...
A longish but worthwhile account of what's been going on is here:
whispering.media/the-maccabi-...
They've built a conning-tower, in other words, and now they're going to fight over it. Not as if there's anything more important we could have been doing, after all.
I can only apologise to Peter Hamill.
I can only apologise to Peter Hamill.
January 16, 2026 at 3:30 PM
They've built a conning-tower, in other words, and now they're going to fight over it. Not as if there's anything more important we could have been doing, after all.
I can only apologise to Peter Hamill.
I can only apologise to Peter Hamill.
But wait! Another group of people you may have heard of has come up with another list of people you might want to elect! The excitement's killing me.
January 16, 2026 at 3:29 PM
But wait! Another group of people you may have heard of has come up with another list of people you might want to elect! The excitement's killing me.
But not to worry, there are things for members to be getting on with. Specifically, it's time we elected a Central Committee! But who's to be on this Central Committee, I hear you ask. Well, a group of people you may have heard of have come up with this list, maybe you could vote for them?
January 16, 2026 at 3:27 PM
But not to worry, there are things for members to be getting on with. Specifically, it's time we elected a Central Committee! But who's to be on this Central Committee, I hear you ask. Well, a group of people you may have heard of have come up with this list, maybe you could vote for them?
(A guy I know emails YP every few days to ask if we could see the local membership list please. He gets an auto-reply every time, and I can visualise his emails sitting there as the 8th, 15th, 23rd, 31st (etc) messages in the Inbox from Hell.)
January 16, 2026 at 3:26 PM
(A guy I know emails YP every few days to ask if we could see the local membership list please. He gets an auto-reply every time, and I can visualise his emails sitting there as the 8th, 15th, 23rd, 31st (etc) messages in the Inbox from Hell.)
(and I mean, come on, some of us remember the Socialist Alliance).
A huge opportunity has been missed and is being missed, day by day. I can only assume that the problem is the leadership, i.e. that there isn't one: very few senior people and no apparatus to speak of.
A huge opportunity has been missed and is being missed, day by day. I can only assume that the problem is the leadership, i.e. that there isn't one: very few senior people and no apparatus to speak of.
January 16, 2026 at 3:24 PM
(and I mean, come on, some of us remember the Socialist Alliance).
A huge opportunity has been missed and is being missed, day by day. I can only assume that the problem is the leadership, i.e. that there isn't one: very few senior people and no apparatus to speak of.
A huge opportunity has been missed and is being missed, day by day. I can only assume that the problem is the leadership, i.e. that there isn't one: very few senior people and no apparatus to speak of.
And YP is a new thing - a national, electoral socialist party building on the experiences of Corbynism, some of which were very positive indeed. You can't do that as a slightly larger version of the SWP, or even as an umbrella group sheltering the SWP alongside RS21, SR etc
January 16, 2026 at 3:22 PM
And YP is a new thing - a national, electoral socialist party building on the experiences of Corbynism, some of which were very positive indeed. You can't do that as a slightly larger version of the SWP, or even as an umbrella group sheltering the SWP alongside RS21, SR etc
Instead of which the initiative passed to people who were already organised in a variety of different groups. Some of those groups I have a lot of time for, some a lot less, but the point is that they contain few people who are at all new to all this.
January 16, 2026 at 3:20 PM
Instead of which the initiative passed to people who were already organised in a variety of different groups. Some of those groups I have a lot of time for, some a lot less, but the point is that they contain few people who are at all new to all this.
I'll draw a veil over the "membership portal" episode - except to say that, while 50,000 is a much smaller number than 800K, once again something could have been done with all that data. Nothing was.
January 16, 2026 at 3:17 PM
I'll draw a veil over the "membership portal" episode - except to say that, while 50,000 is a much smaller number than 800K, once again something could have been done with all that data. Nothing was.
800,000 people expressed interest in what's now Your Party last summer. Something could have been done with that. That list could have been sorted by post code, reliable people identified in each region and asked to start organising.
That didn't happen.
That didn't happen.
January 16, 2026 at 3:15 PM
800,000 people expressed interest in what's now Your Party last summer. Something could have been done with that. That list could have been sorted by post code, reliable people identified in each region and asked to start organising.
That didn't happen.
That didn't happen.
Tush and also pish, I thought. Facile. Childish cynicism.
But that song & those lines (which I haven't heard since I sold that album a few years later) came back to me today.
But that song & those lines (which I haven't heard since I sold that album a few years later) came back to me today.
January 16, 2026 at 3:13 PM
Tush and also pish, I thought. Facile. Childish cynicism.
But that song & those lines (which I haven't heard since I sold that album a few years later) came back to me today.
But that song & those lines (which I haven't heard since I sold that album a few years later) came back to me today.
In 1979 Peter Hamill released his take on parliamentary politics in the song The Old School Tie, concluding
Politicians fight it out on the conning tower
But they all agree not to rock the boat
It's a safe home in politics (It's built on your vote!)
Politicians fight it out on the conning tower
But they all agree not to rock the boat
It's a safe home in politics (It's built on your vote!)
January 16, 2026 at 3:11 PM
In 1979 Peter Hamill released his take on parliamentary politics in the song The Old School Tie, concluding
Politicians fight it out on the conning tower
But they all agree not to rock the boat
It's a safe home in politics (It's built on your vote!)
Politicians fight it out on the conning tower
But they all agree not to rock the boat
It's a safe home in politics (It's built on your vote!)
No, it's far more depressing than that.
January 16, 2026 at 3:05 PM
No, it's far more depressing than that.
Weird how "Accessibility" has changed from meaning "I have special needs, please try to accommodate them" to "I would like to actually use this phone and not just admire it", but there we are.
January 16, 2026 at 2:14 PM
Weird how "Accessibility" has changed from meaning "I have special needs, please try to accommodate them" to "I would like to actually use this phone and not just admire it", but there we are.
Our house is only worth 40% more than it was worth 30 years ago (so house price inflation is pretty low, at least over the medium term) - but that was 9x what it had cost us a few years before that.
January 16, 2026 at 2:12 PM
Our house is only worth 40% more than it was worth 30 years ago (so house price inflation is pretty low, at least over the medium term) - but that was 9x what it had cost us a few years before that.
I don't think that can be the whole story, though – not unless there was a massive urban clearance programme in the late 1970s and early 80s which I somehow overlooked.
January 16, 2026 at 2:12 PM
I don't think that can be the whole story, though – not unless there was a massive urban clearance programme in the late 1970s and early 80s which I somehow overlooked.
FON consistently have high-end estimates for RefUK, but
a) they also have high-end estimates for the Greens, and
b) they often have both parties at levels they reach, in other polls, a couple of weeks later.
It'll be good if this also holds true on the downhilll slide.
a) they also have high-end estimates for the Greens, and
b) they often have both parties at levels they reach, in other polls, a couple of weeks later.
It'll be good if this also holds true on the downhilll slide.
January 16, 2026 at 11:35 AM
FON consistently have high-end estimates for RefUK, but
a) they also have high-end estimates for the Greens, and
b) they often have both parties at levels they reach, in other polls, a couple of weeks later.
It'll be good if this also holds true on the downhilll slide.
a) they also have high-end estimates for the Greens, and
b) they often have both parties at levels they reach, in other polls, a couple of weeks later.
It'll be good if this also holds true on the downhilll slide.
Screencapped from the Bad Place, b/c FON don't appear to be on here (shame!).
Only one poll, but 28% for RefUK, for this pollster, is *low*; when other pollsters were giving them 28%, last May/June, FON had them on 33%. Could be a good sign.
(Apparently Labour are toast, though. Shame about that.)
Only one poll, but 28% for RefUK, for this pollster, is *low*; when other pollsters were giving them 28%, last May/June, FON had them on 33%. Could be a good sign.
(Apparently Labour are toast, though. Shame about that.)
January 16, 2026 at 11:33 AM
Screencapped from the Bad Place, b/c FON don't appear to be on here (shame!).
Only one poll, but 28% for RefUK, for this pollster, is *low*; when other pollsters were giving them 28%, last May/June, FON had them on 33%. Could be a good sign.
(Apparently Labour are toast, though. Shame about that.)
Only one poll, but 28% for RefUK, for this pollster, is *low*; when other pollsters were giving them 28%, last May/June, FON had them on 33%. Could be a good sign.
(Apparently Labour are toast, though. Shame about that.)
It didn't say *which* seven days.
January 16, 2026 at 11:19 AM
It didn't say *which* seven days.