Charlotte Gore

Sunday

Charlotte Gore

I know it’s over and it never really began

From our UK edition

Teenage obsessions are a strange and terrible thing. How, exactly, does an album - which is, after all, nothing more than a recording of some music - seem to embed itself so completely into our identity? How does it become something so crucially important that we can’t imagine our world without it? With hindsight I feel rather embarrassed about the effect that Nevermind had on me. I was 14 when it came out. Back then, kids were divided into “Moshers” - those who liked rock -  and “Ravers” - those who liked dance music -  and I was, at best, a fledgling mosher flirting with bands like Guns ’n’ Roses to my great, great shame.

Monday

Charlotte Gore

How the coalition makes room for Labour

From our UK edition

Whoever wins Labour's leadership, whether it's a breed of Miliband or Balls, its future will be dominated by its understanding of how it found itself on opposition benches. Philip Gould, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and the other progenitors of the New Labour project - were wrong. Their fatal assumption was that their core vote, the working classes, had no-where else to go. Labour, therefore, could reach out the middle classes, broadening their support and thus New Labour was born. At first their calculations were correct. Two slogans, "Education, Education, Education" and "Tough on Crime, Tough on the Causes of Crime" brought together the two separate demographics to create a powerful - and seemingly unstoppable - election winning machine.

Sunday

Charlotte Gore

Have the Tories fallen victim to the Lib Dem Hug of Death?

From our UK edition

First, a little bit of history: as recently as last Christmas, I was a member of the Liberal Democrats. I can't remember why I joined them, and I can't remember why I left – which strongly implies that I put very little thought into either – but that's a story for another time. As a member, I was part of a group within the party that wanted to pull it in a more classically liberal direction: a smaller state, lower taxes and greater personal freedom. The idea of a party committed to greater personal freedom, but not greater economic freedom, always struck me as equal parts ridiculous and confused. If the Lib Dems exist to find a balance between liberty and equality, we thought we needed to prove that the correct balance was 100 percent liberty.