Leadership means understanding your part in building a social movement, not believing you are the personification of one. By Richard Burden Originally published by HuffPost, July 24, 2017 Traitors, backstabbers, Red Tories, Blairite plotters … all of us who have called for a change in Labour Leadership have had these kinds of labels thrown at us in recent weeks. Often they come from keyboard …
Last week, I attended the PACTS and Direct Line Constituency Road Safety Dashboard Awards. This reinforced the need for smarter focus on the issue of road safety as well as promoted a fantastic online tool on road safety progress called the Dashboard. Road safety is very important and must be promoted in order to ensure the safety of everyone, particularly at-risk groups. The event highlighted a …
Yesterday I sent out an email to local Labour members and supporters in the constituency. You can read my thoughts below: Dear Friend, As a local Labour member, I am sure you will want to know the latest on arrangements for Labour’s leadership election. You may have heard that most Party meetings have been put on hold by Labour’s National Executive Committee so I want to let you know about …
Three weeks ago it all felt so different. Britain had not yet voted to leave the European Union. The Pound had not plummeted. The Bank of England had not yet had to step in to steady the situation. The Prime Minister had not announced his resignation and the UK’s major political parties had yet not appeared to be in turmoil. None of us have lived through anything quite like this before and nobody …
Read and watch my question to the Prime Minister on the long-awaited publication of the Chilcot Report into the Iraq war: “May I also ask the House to pause for a minute to remember Robin Cook, who had the courage to speak up against the orthodoxy of the day, and the courage to speak out as a voice of sanity in 2003? The sequence of events that led to the UK’s participation in the invasion …
Tomorrow, the Chilcot Report into the Iraq war will finally be published. Ahead of publication, my thoughts have gone back to how it felt in the House of Commons – and outside – at the time. Sometimes it is easy to get hindsight mixed up with what we knew at the time, as we approached a conflict that was going to have such a profound effect on the Middle East and beyond. It was a …
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.