Martin Meenagh blog

Campaigns against perceived or real corruption have often tended to help conservative, or corporate candidates in American history. For instance, Richard Nixon’s famous ‘K1C2’ formula as vice-presidential nominee in 1952 had been refined over the previous two years. It set Nixon up as a campaigner against ‘Korea, Corruption, and Communism’ and provided a moral justification for his aggression.    Similarly, Senator Charles Sumner broke with the multiracial implications of President Grant’s attempted annexation of Santo Domingo whilst maintaining credibility as Liberal Republican by associating it with perceived corrupt schemes; the association by Liberals and Democrats of Grant’s administration with later allegations of corruption aided this explanation for their opposition.   The elision of catholic Irish immigrants and Tammany corruption in New York—even though Tammany was originally a Protestant enterprise backed by protestant gangs, and the New York Port Authority’s...

In one way or another, I was involved with the British Labour Party for some 32 years. I was once a minor candidate. However, unlike many, I was never in love with the party, and it was never a substitute religion. What happened to it in the latest election here is of interest to me, so I have written a long and tedious blogpost about it--commence at your peril.... British politics are remarkably conservative. The three main parties have been around for over a hundred years in one form or another. One of them has been around for at least two hundred years, and arguably for a further century and a half on top of that. Until recently, even the exceptions could fit into a coherent rule; when the main parties are in broad ideological and social agreement, an alternative, such as the Common Wealth Party in the 1940s, or UKIP in the noughties, will generally arise and, whilst not successful in terms of seats, might well prove a depository for new ideas. Similarly, when one large party is...