Stella Creasy on being a woman in public life

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Last updated: Thursday, 1 May 2014 at 9:03 pm In my interview with Stella Creasy for Ethos Journal, which was mostly about her campaign against payday lenders and her views on empowering in consumers in other parts of the private sector and in public services (longer version here), I also asked her …

What do Sajid Javid and Arthur Balfour have in common?

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Last updated: Thursday, 1 May 2014 at 4:55 pm Sajid Javid has just answered his first Questions in the House of Commons as Secretary of State for Culture. It was successfully dull, apart from Keith Vaz, who welcomed him to his post by saying: “This is the first time in the history …

Chuka Umunna, eye-wateringly New Labour

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Last updated: Friday, 2 May 2014 at 7:26 am Some eye-catchingly aspirational quotations from Chuka Umunna in a forthcoming interview for The House magazine: I don’t have a problem with people making a lot of money, so long as they pay their taxes and it’s good for our economy. Two-thirds of private sector jobs …

Riketty Piketty

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Last updated: Sunday, 4 May 2014 at 8:20 pm If Thomas Piketty’s thesis is that rich countries are moving inevitably and imminently to Victorian levels of inequality, it is not supported by the evidence he adduces for the UK. I haven’t read much of the book yet, but I am suspicious of …

Blair on Egypt and Saudi Arabia

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Last updated: Sunday, 4 May 2014 at 2:03 pm I haven’t commented much on Tony Blair’s speech last week, “Why the Middle East Matters”, partly because I don’t understand his argument about Egypt – that the international community should give “Egypt and its new president as much assistance as we can”. I didn’t agree …

Miliband and Umunna take small step away from naive anti-capitalism

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Last updated: Sunday, 4 May 2014 at 8:03 pm I have written about Chuka Umunna, Labour’s shadow Business Secretary, in The Independent on Sunday today, noting that he did well last week in making life awkward for the Government over the Pfizer bid for AstraZeneca. He did this without once mentioning – or being …

More Piketty Rebutty

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Last updated: Sunday, 4 May 2014 at 8:13 pm Further to my post about Thomas Piketty yesterday, which mentioned that Prof James Galbraith was a doubter, he has been in touch to draw my attention to a new paper by a colleague of his, Wenjie Zhang, which suggests that income inequality in China peaked …

Piketty and Green Eggs and Ham

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Last updated: Tuesday, 6 May 2014 at 11:37 am I have finally knuckled down and read some of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, and I have to admit I like it, Sam-I-Am. (Previous scepticism here and here.) How could one not warm to the intellectual arrogance of someone who dismisses Karl Marx thus? …

Top 10 Malapropisms

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Last updated: Tuesday, 6 May 2014 at 7:11 pm My Top 10 in The Independent on Sunday at the weekend was Malapropisms. As ever, I had a surplus of nominations, some of which did not make the final selection because they were not authenticated. They are still good, so here they are, with …

New Zealand Butter All Over Again

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Last updated: Sunday, 11 May 2014 at 6:05 pm David Cameron’s plan for European renegotiation and referendum became clearer in an important interview with Andrew Marr this morning (transcript here). It is not quite New Zealand butter – Harold Wilson’s cosmetic renegotiation in 1975 of slightly better terms for imports from Commonwealth …