SOLOMON HUGHES recommends Sunjeev Sahota’s recent novel set in a trade union election campaign for its fresh approach to what unites and divides workers, but wishes the union backdrop was truer to life
What a crock!
SOLOMON HUGHES explains the logic behind the ‘Ming vase strategy’ that’s firing up the thinking of Starmer and his gang of centrists
HOLLOW: Keir Starmer
Morning Star international editor ROGER McKENZIE says Trump’s ceaseless belligerence is a desperate effort to prevent the emergence of a multilateral world
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“MING vase strategy” is another pundit cliche — like “big-tent strategy” or “grown-ups back in charge” — which tries using recently made up SW1 “common-sense” lore to narrow political possibilities.
The theory is Keir Starmer is applying a “Ming vase strategy,” which means avoiding risk at all costs so Labour’s poll lead doesn’t smash to the ground.
The phrase first surfaces in 1996, when the Guardian reported Roy Jenkins likened Tony Blair’s attitude to his poll lead like “a man carrying a delicate Ming vase across a polished museum floor: one slip and it crashes.”
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