Political profiles

Developing the press profiles of various politicians that I started on this site last year, there are some pieces on the Lion & Unicorn site (where I do most of my posting these days) that may be of interest.

On the Labour side (click on the names for links), there's:

Angela Eagle

John McDonnell

Tom Watson

 Hilary Benn

And, representing the Conservative Party, there's:

Theresa May

Michael Gove

There's lots of other good stuff there as well. Not just pieces by me, but also the work of Dan Atkinson, Sam Harrison and Paul Saffer. Do have a look.

Leonine writing

While I'm unavoidably detained elsewhere on my duties, I'd like to take the opportunity to direct your feet to the sunny side of the street, to the website Lion & Unicorn. I sometimes write for this myself but, more importantly, so too do some other, very fine writers. It's good stuff, I promise.

In addition to my duties in this House

I shall continue writing this blog, but recently I've also started putting together another site, Lion & Unicorn, to which I would like to draw your attention.

This is still at an early stage, but I have high hopes for the venture. The intention is cover aspects of England and Britain - political, cultural, economic, sporting - in a slightly more reflective manner than the media generally has time to do.

Which doesn't mean that it will avoid the news agenda entirely. So, for example, there are currently to be found several pieces that explore aspects of this season's excitement, Jeremy Corbynmania. Sam Harrison writes about who or what is responsible for Corbynmania, Dan Atkinson examines Corbyn's policy of people's quantitative easing, and I blame Tony Blair for his lack of faith in politics. I also engage in a little light mockery of the whole phenomenon.

As I say, early days yet, and we haven't officially launched the site (whatever we mean by that), but it's starting to come together. Lion & Unicorn - bookmark it, bear it in mind. Now you know where we are, don't be a stranger.

Chummy

One day someone should get Pete Frame to do a family tree of the New Labour spadocracy. This is an early attempt to make sense of the connections by the excellent Dan Atkinson, writing in the Guardian on 6 April 1995, long before they all became household names:

We know communitarianism is the vogue, but the Blair and Brown bunnies may be taking things too far. Ed Balls, he of endogenous growth and adviser to Mr Brown, is seeing Yvette Cooper, who has worked for Harriet Harman and is now on Gordon's payroll, too. Yvette is chummy with the fragrant Liz Lloyd, a researcher in Tony Blair's office. Liz's main squeeze is another Ed - the younger Miliband. He has also just started working for Gordon (if you want to rile the office, just ring and ask for 'Ed'). and his brother, David Miliband, is Liz's boss. The office politics must be worse than the real sort.

Blackpool

I shall be appearing as part of a day of events at the Grundy Gallery in Blackpool on Saturday 4 July. It's tied in to The Unspeakable Freedom Device, described by its creator, Jennet Thomas, as 'an experimental narrative film and multimedia sculptural installation'.

Also appearing on the day are Esther Leslie, Sally O'Reilly, Jennifer Thatcher and Martin Rowson. The work of the latter, of course, can be found not only in the Guardian, but also on some fine book jackets, such as this one:

Further information on the event can be found here.