Dear Mr Reed, 4 – your five priorities

Dear Mr Reed, welcome to your new job. It all gets real now. Yesterday you set out your five priorities for Defra; clean rivers zero waste economy food security nature recovery reducing flood risk These are good as headlines and demonstrate more strategic thought than we have seen from the Tories in 14 years. Everybody…

Rachel Reeves’s speech

Rachel Reeves made a speech yesterday – click here – it sounded pretty good but the devils (and the angels) are always in the detail not the rhetoric.  Who could argue with this sentence? ‘Over the weekend I made clear to Treasury officials that the manifesto commitments that we were elected on will be kept…

General election comments

I’d like to thank the Scottish Labour Party, the Lib Dems and Reform for delivering a massive Labour majority on such a small share of the vote. Voters in Scotland switched from SNP to Labour, voters in the southwest and elsewhere switched from Con to LibDem, voters all over the place switched from Con to…

Dear Mr Reed, 3, marches and manifestos

Dear Steve Reed, in just a week’s time you may be in your second day in your new job as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. I hope so.  As a Labour member I’ve been delivering leaflets for Lee Barron in Raunds, a small, ex-boot-and-shoe town in Northants, and in the Corby…

Dear Mr Reed, 2 – Badgers

Dear Steve Reed, in just over three weeks time you may well be Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. If so, that will give you great opportunities to make the world a better place and that must be an exciting prospect. However, one hot potato will be firmly on your desk –…