Philip Collins

Thoughts at https://t.co/Cc1Ft8b86s Cricket at https://t.co/cCz5VxjJpN Writer-in-chief, The Draft (@thedraftwriters) Columnist, Evening Standard

Articles

June 2025

1 week ago | prospectmagazine.co.uk | Philip Collins |Ann Pettifor |Phil Tinline |Sam Freedman

Kraftwerk, autism, my son and me
Could it happen here?

1 week ago | prospectmagazine.co.uk | Philip Collins

Nigel Farage is tired of being everyone else’s gadfly and now he has found true ambition. A member of parliament at the eighth time of trying, he wants to be Reform UK’s prime minister, and he believes he can do it. There is no doubt that Farage is brilliantly successful at spooking his rivals. He has led a one-man party with a mission of making a mess of other parties.
Could it happen here?

1 week ago | prospectmagazine.co.uk | Philip Collins

Nigel Farage is tired of being everyone else’s gadfly and now he has found true ambition. A member of parliament at the eighth time of trying, he wants to be Reform UK’s prime minister, and he believes he can do it. There is no doubt that Farage is brilliantly successful at spooking his rivals. He has led a one-man party with a mission of making a mess of other parties.
Richard Titmuss and Labour’s attachment to welfare

1 month ago | prospectmagazine.co.uk | Philip Collins

Liz Kendall’s announcement in the House of Commons that £5bn needed to come off the welfare bill by 2030 was made in defiance of a strong Labour tradition. There is a storm to come on this question because the defence of welfare has for a long time been a core Labour idea. At best, Kendall’s proposals can be complimented as being brave. Incapacity benefits as part of Universal Credit will be cut for new claimants by more than £2,000 a year and frozen for existing claimants.
Maurice Glasman and the origins of Blue Labour

2 months ago | prospectmagazine.co.uk | Philip Collins

Maurice Glasman, Blue Labour (2022) and William Morris, News From Nowhere (1890). There was once a seminar, at the Labour party stronghold of University College, Oxford (Beveridge, Attlee and Wilson all had connections) that brought together thinkers from both the New and the Blue Labour folds. It was 2009; Gordon Brown was prime minister. Putting the Blue side, Maurice Glasman opened his remarks by quoting Virginia Woolf’s diary: “Terrible weekend. Man drowned in river.
Labour’s meritocracy paradox and the legacy of Michael Young

Jan 28, 2025 | prospectmagazine.co.uk | Philip Collins

Michael Young: The Rise And Fall Of The MeritocracyMichael Young embodies the promise of the Labour party but also the doubt that it can ever live up to its self-stated ideal. He will forever be the man who brought the 1945 general election manifesto into being, from his position as director of Political and Economic Planning.
Trump will now be judged like any other politician

Jan 20, 2025 | spectator.com.au | Philip Collins

The abiding question for the 47th President of the United States of America is whether he now, after running against everything that counts as orthodox in the way of politics, has suddenly become a politician. Donald Trump is the candidate from beyond the beltway, the man who speaks directly to the public.
Trump will now be judged like any other politician

Jan 20, 2025 | spectator.co.uk | Philip Collins

The abiding question for the 47th President of the United States of America is whether he now, after running against everything that counts as orthodox in the way of politics, has suddenly become a politician. Donald Trump is the candidate from beyond the beltway, the man who speaks directly to the public. Yet the conjuring trick, rhetorically, for every successful candidate is the extent to which he can maintain outsider status after an emphatic victory.
The Labour Review of Books

Dec 2, 2024 | lookstranger.substack.com | Philip Collins

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Tax, spend-and hope

Nov 20, 2024 | prospectmagazine.co.uk | Philip Collins

The Labour government is already being dismissed as a standard tax and spend administration, as if raising taxes and public spending were some kind of socialist novelty. The verdict is a couple of words short. This is a Labour government which, so far at least, is looking to tax, spend and hope—the hope in question referring to its faith in the capacity of the state. It is standard Labour doctrine, and it was there from the start.