debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
Every time we analyse European social democracy the challenge is both more daunting and more exciting. From the publication of Building the Good Society by Andrea Nahles and Jon Cruddas to Europe & the Good Society: After the Crash by Thorben Albrecht and myself everything has changed. But things have now changed again. Events in Cyprus and the struggles [...]
I write as someone who is on the British left – someone who sees the destructive capacity of capitalism before I see its dynamism. Someone who sees the separation of power from politics and politics from power being the over-riding feature of the last 30 years. Someone who believes in the fabulous potential of people [...]
The state occupies a central place in social democratic thinking. It is the vehicle through which policies are delivered. Indeed, it is no coincidence that the growth of the modern state was a forerunner of the social democratic movement. Today, it is impossible to think about social democracy without considering the role of the state. But the relationship is not without [...]
Form follows function. What are social democratic party’s for and therefore how should they be structured? In the era of what we could call social democracy 1.0 when unions were big, production was bigger and the state and power heavily centralized the goal was the administration of power from the top down. War socialism meant [...]
The left gets out of bed for equality. We are born equal. We should live equal lives. It is a noble aim. It has fuelled social democracy, its governments, its policies and its troops for a century and a half. But in Britain at least the poor are getting poorer and are about to get [...]
Socialism is what Labour governments do. So famously spoke Herbert Morrison, senior Labour cabinet member and deputy leader of the Labour Party in 1945. On one level, 65 years later, Morrison’s words look paternalistic at best and plain arrogant at worst. It was socialism done to the people. But it was a sound bite that [...]
The left’s response to austerity, thus far, has been necessary but far from sufficient. Social democrats have to challenge the cuts agenda because they will make growth less likely and impact on the poor hardest. That work must go on. Not least, the left must refocus on the bankers and financialised capitalism. This is the [...]
It is so depressingly inevitable. Obama, like Clinton, Blair and Brown before him, like in Rudd in Australia, like the Swedish social democrats, like every example of centre-left government the world over – we seem incapable of building a progressive and sustainable movement for change. Sure Obama can recover from the mid-term disaster. He can find his feet, stabilize [...]
Five years ago, twenty or so social democrats in and around the British Labour Party, politicians, academics, journalists and activists sat in a seminar room in a college in London’s Regents Park. The topic of debate was how to describe the Good Society. The discussion led to a Compass publication in 2006. Fast-forward five years [...]
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