Articles tagged with: The Guardian
“There are many reasons to welcome” the inauguration of Barack Obama, said Dianne Abbott yesterday in PMQs, “but one is that when a man whose father, 60 years ago, could not have been served in restaurants in Washington becomes President of the United States, we can all of us, in our communities, turn to our children and say, “Yes, you can”.” But can that ever be completely true in a monarchy? Surely not, which is why Republic is a campaign richly deserving of support.
PMQs also saw Ronnie Campbell ask Gordon Brown: “Will he take advice from me and some of my hon. Friends and nationalise all the banks?” Doubtless this has long been the sweetest of all dreams for a politician described in The Guardian as ”an old-fashioned leftie“. The PM hesitated before making Northern Rock into what Campbell called ”the People’s Bank” but eventually this action became inevitable. If a similar trajectory is to be followed in respect of RBS and Lloyds, perhaps, as so often, it may be better to face up to the inevitable sooner rather than later. Better to follow the example of Sweden in the 1990s than Japan. Nationalisation certainly starts to seem the pragmatic option when the likes of John McFall and Jon Moulton unite to advocate it, while republicanism remains the only principled option on the British constitution.
