Warning from Essex: Labour can’t bank on working class voters returning to the fold

Originally published by Labourlist on 30/12/2019.

Essex is an odd starting point for 2019 election analysis. The Basildon bellwether is no more. The Tories hold the South Basildon and East Thurrock seat with a majority just short of twenty thousand – like the rest of the county the seat is true blue.

Given the Conservative Party’s tightening grip on this corner of the country it is little wonder that the broadcasters’ gaze has wandered elsewhere in recent years. In 2015 it was Nuneaton not the Basildon seat where reporters flocked to. While the likes of Thurrock, and Harlow, also Essex constituencies held by Labour until 2010, were similarly shunned. But, now Nuneaton is no longer news. The red wall has crumbled and Westminster’s lens is squarely focused on the debris scattered across Labour’s old-heartlands in the North and Midlands.

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Don’t lose your honour – Britain can do more for Hongkongers

Originally Published by the Hong Kong Free Press on 08/12/2019.

Hong Kong’s last governor Chris Patten warned Britain that ignoring creeping authoritarianism in its former colony while pursuing trade deals with the People’s Republic of China risked the country losing its honour. It is a question I pondered in my first piece for the Hong Kong Free Press just under three years ago.

In my piece, I praised a few exceptional British parliamentarians who regularly spoke out about freedoms in Hong Kong. One was Labour’s then Shadow Minister Catherine West, although I could have easily named the Conservative’s Fiona Bruce and others. Either way, the point was that these were lone voices on the green benches. I bemoaned the scant attention paid to developments in the city by Fleet Street and the general disinterest amongst the British public outside of the country’s Hong Kong diaspora. 

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