Did Giotto paint the Turin Shroud?

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Wednesday, 8 June 2011 at 9:31 am Number 626 in the endless series of Questions to Which the Answer is No is asked by the automatic story generator at the Daily Mail (the online version does not ask a question and therefore risks failing Paul Dacre’s requirement that his entire organisation be devoted to trying to get …

Is the Archbish right?

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Thursday, 9 June 2011 at 11:59 am Is Rowan Williams right to say that “no one voted” for the Coalition Government’s policies? He was talking about its “radical long-term policies” on health and education, but the charge would be more accurate if made of the Government’s deficit-reduction plan. Labour and the Lib Dems …

“It’s the politics that got small”

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Friday, 10 June 2011 at 12:39 pm Grateful to The Daily Telegraph for supplying a useful bundle of primary source material for next year’s Masters course in The Labour Governments 1997-2007 at Queen Mary, University of London. Some of the students from previous years’ undergraduate course in The Blair Government talked to the BBC about what it …

Ken to Ed’s rescue

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Saturday, 11 June 2011 at 11:27 am Only one problem with the Dan Hodges deadline for Ed Miliband’s leadership, as laid down on Newsnight last night. Hodges said that the May local and London elections next year might be the occasion for the Labour Party to decide that it was not going to …

The Crash of 2008: No Left Turn

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Saturday, 11 June 2011 at 3:43 pm Extracts from the 31-page introduction to the paperback edition of Tony Blair’s A Journey are available on the book’s website. This bit, which is not on the website, is interesting, as it follows Blair’s warning to the left in the hardback original against taking the wrong lesson …

“Jilted”? Do They Mean Us?

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Saturday, 11 June 2011 at 10:30 pm The young are less likely than older people to agree with Labour’s criticism of the Government for abandoning them. Ed Miliband borrowed the phrase “jilted generation” (right) the other day, but young people themselves are (slightly) less likely to think of themselves that way. In a special ComRes …

Are boring films good for the soul?

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Sunday, 12 June 2011 at 10:26 am At last, a Question to Which the Answer is No to which I can bring the authority of personal experience. As someone who has walked out of a Tarkovsky film, I can confidently say that this question, asked by Vanessa Thorpe in The Observer today, is number …

Labour tries to be interesting

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Sunday, 12 June 2011 at 3:10 pm Alastair Campbell last week described Labour as the “third most interesting party”. Well, there is one way that Labour people know to fix that problem, and that is to launch a coruscating civil war. We have had the leak of the Ed Balls files (my column in The …

Can We End Obesity Within A Decade?

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Monday, 13 June 2011 at 9:50 am Number 634 in the series of Questions to Which the Answer is No is asked by Carole Carson, a “fitness advocate” (“Occupation?” “Fitness advocate.”), at the Huffington Post, or, as this part of it seems to be called, AOL Healthy Living. Thanks to Dan. Also today I bring …

Left tokenism, hand waving and soporific sloganising … bound to fail

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Monday, 13 June 2011 at 3:59 pm Hopi Sen has stopped blogging, temporarily we hope, but continues to deploy his brilliance in, of all ghastly dark corners of the internet, the Comment Is Free comment boxes. To save you going there, I reprint his response to Neal Lawson, chair of Compass, …