Mehdi Hasan: Gordon Brown

Perhaps the most clichéd line one comes across in the intersecting worlds of politics and journalism is that immigration is "the subject no politician wants to talk about".

It's not just inaccurate but annoying. And it's most annoying when, in the midst of a discussion about immigration, a participant claims, with a straight face: ""We just don't talk about immigration." Doh!

As I noted in a  read more

First Alistair Darling and now, surprise, surprise, Jack Straw. From the BBC website:

[The] former Labour cabinet member Jack Straw is to step down from his current role, ending 30 years of front-bench politics.

The Blackburn MP has held many of the top jobs in British politics, including foreign secretary and home secretary.

Elected to parliament in 1979 as the member for Blackburn, Straw was a campaign manager for Tony Blair's 1994 Labour ... read more

The bullying charities seem to be, er, bullying each other. Bullying UK has called on Christine Pratt, the boss (and founder) of the National Bullying Helpline, to resign. When will Beatbullying and BulliesOut join in on this latest confected controversy?

Actually, (bad) jokes aside, I think Bullying UK is right. This woman Pratt (don't worry, I won't call her a prat; that would be too easy) ... read more

Regular readers of the magazine, and of the NS blogs, will be aware that my colleague James Macintyre and I have been banging on for a while about the "soft" Tory lead and the muddled media's desire to crown Cameron now, rather than wait for the verdict of a general election next year. We've long predicted that the Tory poll lead will shrink, that Brown's performances will improve ... read more