Alan Simpson's Blog
Where does Labour go now? Parliament starts the new decade with Labour still in a state of grief…and anger…about its crushing election defeat. It’s a good place to start. If we’re brutally honest, the real grief is not rooted in the depleted number of Labour MPs, nor in the personal tragedy defeat meant for Jeremy…
International lessons in decentralising Britain’s energy system Britain has to cut its carbon emissions in half within the coming decade to meet the IPCC and Paris climate targets. Decentralised energy will be a key to doing so. Since 2010, financial levers have been skewed in favour of the transnational, the unaccountable and e non-renewable. Smart…
At a time riven by contradictions and confusion, it is important to celebrate what’s worth celebrating. Labour’s pre-manifesto pledges – to build only zero-carbon homes from 2022, and to make 27 million homes energy efficient by 2030 – could mark the beginning of a climate politics General Election. Not before time. It isn’t just that…
Politics beyond Brexit Brexit is a constitutional crisis. Climate is an existential one. It’s important to get that clear before diving into my childhood affection for Peanuts cartoons. One of my all time favourites involved Charlie Brown (the doggedly persistent but incompetent organiser of an ever-failing kids baseball team) coming off the park after another…
As Labour prepares for the next General Election it will come under diverging pressures on how to address both the glaring wealth inequalities and the risk of climate breakdown. Some of the avenues that look like solutions would actually make things worse. This short paper explores some of the pitfalls Labour needs to avoid.…
Buyers beware: this may become more of a rant than a reflection. Last Wednesday’s Prime Ministers Questions may be more of a turning point than people think. It was a day when people queued up to kick buckets out of Jeremy Corbyn. On reflection, though, Corbyn may be the only one to emerge with any…
The nation may be mesmerised by the last stages of the Tory Leadership race, but the whole spectacle comes much closer to insanity than vanity.
At the end of 2016 there were 345,000 electric buses in operation worldwide. China had 343,500 of them. By September 2018, the USA had over 1 million plug-in cars.
It can’t come as a surprise that Labour has been thrown into a spin after the bruising it took in the Euro elections. The campaign was a disaster, the message unconvincing and the politics deeply confusing.
As political Parties dust themselves down after the drubbing of local government elections, the good news is that all the answers are to be found in bigger, rather than smaller, issues. Climate, not Brexit, is the key.
If I wore a hat I would tip it to Extinction Rebellion. Their occupation of key parts of central London amounts to far more than a protest rally.
Ugly scenes outside parliament have made the place look and feel like the Siege of Troy. But around the country bigger issues already fill the landscape.
Sometimes the starkest warnings come from events that don’t take place. In this case, the warning came from Honda’s decision to turn back a ship destined for the UK.
Let’s get the bad news out of the way first. Whatever happens, Brexit is going to dominate parliamentary politics for at least another year, maybe more.
As an MP I met lots of constituents who had just lost someone close. Bereavement and grief took many forms. Some wanted a shoulder to lean on.