Former
Welcome to my website and blog.
You can read a bit more about who I am and what makes me tick here. A summary of the work I did when I was Labour MP for Birmingham Northfield between 1992 and 2019 can also be found here.
The older posts on here date from my time as an MP but I have continued to blog since leaving Parliament.
The opening paragraphs of my blog posts appear at the bottom of this page in reverse date order. The “Read on” buttons take you to what I have written in full. My posts below also contain links to articles I have written and which have been published elsewhere, together with posts imported from my former Facebook page. My current Facebook account is here.
To view posts on a specific subject, from both during and after my time in Parliament, please click one of the buttons below.
These are the main subjects on which I’ve written. Click here to view the full list of categories.
Here is the link to my Bluesky account, and here is the link to my Twitter/X account. You can view my latest Facebook posts here. I also have a LinkedIn profile.
Click on ‘Contact’ below to get in touch with me.
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.@RshakhShakhshir is right. How can our world allow this inhumanity to carry on?
this is winter in gaza because they have blocked the entry of not aid, but essentials for life. tents are not allowed in because the poles are considered dual use. 190 countries, 8B people, and we cannot get in shelter, food and fuel to 2M people trapped in a death camp?
Midterm elections: Thank you, people of USA.
As torrential rains hit Gaza and winter approaches, the level of suffering being inflicted on the people living there is beyond inhuman. Medical Aid for Palestinians has provided testimony from its medical teams in Gaza – and has called on the UK Government to impose sanctions on those obstructing aid and uphold international law.
Local Healthwatch have welcomed today’s announcement by Ministers that they will not be proceeding with plans to abolish either the Healthwatch network of local patients and public watchdogs or Healthwatch England nationally.
In retaliation for last month’s announcement by the UK government that sanctions will be imposed on Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank, the government of Israel declared that it would force the closure of the British Consulate General in East Jerusalem. The Israeli government’s threat was both petulant and something it had no right to do. East Jerusalem is not part of Israel. It is …
Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband’s package of sanctions against Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and particularly against its increasingly violent settlement programme, is the most significant reset of UK Middle East policy in a generation.
How Yvette Cooper can demonstrate Andy Burnham’s new ways of working in practice.
Early last year I wrote about the unlawful detention of Palestinian doctor Hussam Abu Safiya, who had stood alone and unarmed in front of Israeli tanks as they advanced through the ruins of his hospital in Gaza. Nearly 18 months on, Dr Abu Safiya is still held in an Israeli prison. He has still not been put on trial.
For many people, the extent to which Andy Burnham is prepared to reset UK policy towards Israel and Palestine will be an important test of how far he can be trusted on issues much closer to home.
“Good growth in every postcode and hope in every heart.” The last words of Andy Burnham’s speech yesterday were quite something. Even for someone who has been around the world of politics for as many years as I have, this was the most inspirational speech I have heard from a prospective Party leader in a very long time.
“The people don’t want ‘politics as usual’. The real reason behind the rise of the leaders from Donald Trump to Giorgia Meloni to Javier Milei is that they answer this call. You can like them or dislike them, but their chief characteristic is they appear to be unbound, not constrained by conventional thinking.” So says Tony Blair in his essay “The Labour party is playing with fire over its future …
Government plans to end the existence of an independent voice for patients and service users in health and social care have come under challenging scrutiny this week with the publication of a major new report by the respected think tank, the King’s Fund. Healthwatch Birmingham and Solihull, which I chair, has published this response …
Over the past week, my thoughts about the Epstein–Mandelson scandal have jumped from revulsion about the revelations themselves, to trying to process what they will mean to those who have experienced abuse. Then they have reawakened memories of my own run-ins with Mandelson – and got me thinking again about the culture of self-justified impunity that power brings with it.
The US president’s Board of Peace has less to do with peace, in Gaza or elsewhere, and more to do with enforcing a new, transactional global order. Welcome to the America-First Trumpian world.
I was Labour Member of Parliament for Birmingham Northfield between 1992 and 2019 and a former Shadow Transport Minister. I now chair Healthwatch in Birmingham and Solihull, and the West Midlands Board of Remembering Srebrenica. I also work as a public affairs consultant. I am an effective community advocate and stakeholder alliance builder with a passion for human rights. I am a trustee of the Balfour Project charity and of Citizens Advice Birmingham, and a former Chair of Medical Aid for Palestinians.
