Invent the Future

In just a few weeks’ time, at 11pm GMT on 29 March 2019, the United Kingdom is due to leave the European Union. At the time of writing, we still don’t have much clue what this looks like: will Theresa May be able to get her deal through parliament? Might we leave with a ‘Norway-plus’ type of arrangement, retaining membership of the Customs Union? Might we leave without a deal, leading to probable economic crisis and social chaos? Or could the leave date be postponed, or the whole thing cancelled? Absurdly, much of this uncertainty comes down to seemingly insurmountable […]

A slightly modified version of this article first appeared in the Morning Star on 03 March 2018. Simon Hannah’s recently-released book ‘A Party with Socialists in it: a History of the Labour Left’ provides a timely, concise and very readable account of the ongoing struggle between left and right within Labour. The title is inspired by Tony Benn’s comment that “the Labour Party has never been a socialist party, although there have always been socialists in it”, and the text charts the attempts of those socialists to promote their vision over the course of the past 118 years. This fight […]

He hates racism of all kinds. Actually genuinely hates it, not just pretending. He’s done more against it than any of us, working to support oppressed communities, taking asylum cases to the Home Office, campaigning tirelessly on behalf of the victims of racism, xenophobia and religious discrimination. He hates war. Again, he’s done more against it than the vast majority of us. Wouldn’t it be good if the person making the final decision about whether to bomb a country was the same person that can be heard in Trafalgar Square shouting “No war for oil”? He wants to save the […]

Tories resorting to xenophobia It’s difficult to imagine an election campaign less imaginative and effective than the one the Conservative Party has been waging. Conversely, Labour’s campaign has been both convincing and compelling. Even in the eyes of many Labour MPs, Jeremy Corbyn was “unelectable and undesirable” just a couple of months ago, and yet, with just a few days to go until polling day, Labour are closing the gap on the Tories. When the election was announced, the YouGov poll had the Conservatives on 44 percent to Labour’s 23 percent. The most recent YouGov poll (at the time of […]

Theresa May must have thought that calling a snap general election was a political masterstroke. A landslide victory promised to give her government some legitimacy and shore up support for a hard Brexit that emphasised xenophobia over economic sense. Furthermore, a Tory landslide would make it very difficult for Jeremy Corbyn to continue as leader of the Labour Party, and therefore could well put an end to Corbyn’s project of turning Labour into a vehicle for the interests of ordinary people. Such an outcome could kill meaningful parliamentary opposition for a generation. Unfortunately for May’s plan, Labour is waging an […]

This article first appeared on Telesur. The limitations of progressive governments within a capitalist system are reasonably well known. While an economic system based on private property of the means of production remains in place, any national government has to protect that private property – and the exploitation of labour that goes with it. However, politics is not simple, and within the broad framework of parliamentary democracy there can be considerable variation in policy based on the composition of a specific government. To give an extreme example, Rafael Caldera and Hugo Chávez occupied the same official political space – the […]

This wasn’t supposed to happen. When Jeremy Corbyn announced, a few months ago, that he was throwing his hat in the ring for the Labour leadership contest, many – myself included – were sceptical. The whole project seemed irrelevant and hopeless; even if he did get sufficient MP nominations to get on the ballot, everybody knew that his candidature would end in ignominious defeat. The episode was set to provide yet more proof (as if any were needed) that the entire ‘left Labour’ project was long past its sell-by date. The bookmakers, whose predictions are generally far more reliable than […]