We British: The Poetry of a People

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So, for Starmer, this might appear a slam-dunk. His relations with the Liberal Democrats are good enough. How good? A first test will be the three by-elections coming up this summer as a result of Johnson’s departure from parliamentary politics. At school I was always on stage. I played the head teacher in Alan Bennett’s Forty Years On, and the main role in Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi. I remember that vividly because my opening line was something like ‘shitter bugger’, which as a small boy is a great opening line. A new executive for the 1922 Committee could change the rules and, if submerged by a sea of new letters, hold a leadership contest almost immediately. “We could do the whole thing in a matter of days,” one anti-Johnson Tory told me. Rishi Sunak nervously waits to see if more Boris Johnson allies will quit as MPsMPs from both sides of the warring Conservative Party have been writing in the Sunday papers about Boris Johnson's next moves. It is a history, not written in terms of detailed, consequential events, but a history of context, of the prevailing climate, of social pressures and enduring passions. I remember being impressed with the opening, which presents Caedmon, our earliest known poet, (in translation as well as in the original Northumbrian dialect) as freshly and vividly as though he were alive today. It’s not surprising that there should be a bit more historical context in the early section of the book than in the later periods, where Andrew Marr seems frequently to lament that he has to omit poems that he admires, or limit himself to extracts.

But what of voting reform? This is a more interesting proposition. If Starmer was able to bring together the large but long-separated Liberal and Labour traditions, he could make 2024 not the moment of another, possibly short-lived, Labour interruption in British politics but the beginning of a long, left-liberal hegemony, as long-lasting as the Conservative one has been.Team Starmer is not rejecting Lib Dem overtures outright. Though neither party will admit that conversations are taking place, both emphasise the existence of a left-liberal majority across the United Kingdom that has so far been suppressed. Boris Johnson strikes againRishi Sunak wants to present Britain’s Conservative Party as competent. Boris Johnson’s departure, and three attendant messy by-elections, revive the sense of shambles The amount of factual inaccuracy from British politicians has increased exponentially in recent years, and I do think Boris Johnson is culpable. It’s always gone on, but he’s taken it to a new level. To directly assert things that are so untrue is new, and I think has caused enormous difficulty and pain to the whole political ecosystem. There’s a standard political memoir, isn’t there? It bubbles along as if scripted by a politically savvy AI engine: amusing and affecting anecdotes of the hero’s early life and university successes; feelings of inadequacy on reaching parliament; vivid descriptions of the scramble up the ladder, including quotable digs at rivals and opponents; the strange absence of the scandal for which the author will be mainly remembered; the self-aggrandising account of the author’s many successes in office, this part at wearisome length.

It comes after Mr Johnson officially resigned as an MP on Monday afternoon, with the former PM accusing his successor Rishi Sunak of talking 'rubbish' in a row over peerages. I think he is someone who all his life has expected optimistically - and perhaps in a narcissistic way, that something useful will turn up and mostly, so far, it has done. But not this time," he said. Rather like that unexpected gesture, this is a pleasant surprise: a genuinely unusual, bold and important book. You can’t say that of many political memoirs.Labour have had their own teams flat out in Uxbridge (where Boris Johnson was MP) and Mid Beds – and in Selby and Ainsty, whose Conservative MP Nigel Adams has also stood down. Selby looks almost as safe as any Tory seat could be, and Adams had a 60 per cent share of the vote at the last election. But his seat is being redistributed in a way that helps Labour and it has become one of its less obvious targets: the party will fight very hard here. Boris Johnson’s constituents react to resignation as Labour eyes by-electionA by-election and a new MP await for the people of Uxbridge and South Ruislip, in West London. PGMcNamara speaks to voters there about Boris Johnson’s resignation.

Rishi Sunak, who seemed such a favourite as a future prime minister before the disaster of the Spring Statement and the controversy over the tax status of his wife, has the resilience of the seriously wealthy. There are not many people in the higher echelons of Westminster whom you could imagine walking away, perfectly happily, into an entirely different life. But he is one of them. Dismissive about Labour – she’s a proper Tory – May is prepared to be sharp about her own side, too. Looking at the wider picture after Grenfell, she complains that too many Conservatives came to see social housing as a matter of problem families and problem individuals, refusing to hear what they were saying. She thinks that, in Laurie Magnus, Rishi Sunak has appointed an ethics adviser without sufficient experience. And after a withering account of modern slavery in Britain she says of the current Prime Minister: “To my dismay, the government’s approach… has been driven by the desire to deal with illegal immigration rather than by the wish to stop slavery.” This early Scottish section, which contains poems about freedom, independence and what became the essence of socialism, remains my favourite part of the book, and, I think, Andrew Marr’s. It has great vigour, and he seems happy to lay before us his deep admiration for these poets. Had Bercow not done this, “there was every prospect that we would have delivered an earlier exit from the EU, maintained better relations with our European partners and, above all, delivered an agreement which would have been more beneficial for Northern Ireland and hence for the future integrity of the UK than the one Boris Johnson signed.”He knows that changing the voting system would mean the breakaway of a modest number of hardcore socialist radicals. He could live with that. Indeed, it might make his life as prime minister easier. He also knows, surely, that it would splinter the Conservatives much more damagingly; Nigel Farage’s come-hither wooing of Boris Johnson has already begun. The end result, if Starmer is bold enough, could indeed be the securing of a moderate, liberal, centre-left political establishment – although at the price of admitting more extreme politics at either edge (under PR, Farage’s Ukip would have won more than 80 seats at the 2015 general election).

A powerful, visceral and political takedown, delivered in verse. Stunning work, as always, by the one and only [Andrew Marr],” said another. u201c'I'm so bored of Boris Johnson I could scream.\u2019 \n\n@AndrewMarr9 delivers an epic takedown of the 'selfish, narcissistic' ex-PM in the form of poetry...\u201d — LBC (@LBC)

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In the case of the SNP, an assumption of absolute virtue and absolute contempt for unionists led to a suffocating belief that “we can do no wrong”. Civil society and the civil service both twisted to face the New Virtue in Scotland. Those who weren’t compliant enough, externally or inside the party, were deftly elbowed aside. This left a worryingly small, increasingly assured and essentially self-policing core. The Forward Book of Poetry 2024 brings together the best poetry published in the British Isles over the last year, including the winners of the 2024 Forward Prizes. In showcasing the range and ambition of today’s fresh voices alongside new work by familiar names, this anthology is a perfect introduction to contemporary poetry. Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.