Neal Lawson
Neal Lawson is a British political commentator, fellow of the Global Policy Institute and chairman of the pressure group Compass. Neal also publishes regularly in the Guardian and the New Statesman. His most recent book is 'All Consuming' published by Penguin Press.
Labour Needs New Synthesis of Practical Thinking and Idealistical Striving
Two possibilities face Labour’s new leader: Either the Coalition will succeed and Labour will be in Opposition for yet another generation, or it will implode and Labour will find itself back in office. I fear the first option and dread the second. The left is in danger of making the same political misjudgement it made [...]
English Football Needs Root and Branch Reform… And so Does the Labour Party
I can’t seem to separate two momentous recent events in my mind: the England team crashing out of the South African World Cup and the battle for the Labour leadership. The dynamics of the two keep colliding in my brain. Will an analysis of both help the other? Lets start with the football team. England, [...]
After the General Election – Labour’s Place in the new Political Landscape
I’m writing this, as the Social Europe order of things dictates, in that awful interregnum between Britain almost going to the polls (in 48 hours) and knowing the result. I’m not a commentator but an activist who wants Labour to win, but knows, like everyone else, that an outright win in terms of seats or [...]
A Social America? Obama and the Left
Readers of this site, it can be presumed, want a social Europe. But what about a social America? Presumably we want that too. But is President Obama going to leave a legacy of a more social USA and help end the political schism between the two continents? I was lucky enough to spend three fast [...]
Europe at the Crossroads: It’s Now or Never!
The European Union is one of the grandest projects in human history – the creation of a new economic, and eventually social, super-state out of the ashes of post-war despair. The founders had a cunning plan: They would create an economic imperative around the production of essentials such as coal and steel, convinced that a [...]
An Idea Whose Time Has Come
In 2002 I published an article on a maximum wage in the centre-left theory journal Renewal. The idea of putting a ceiling on what people could earn was left-field, to say the least. It was more a thought experiment than a serious attempt to influence political debate. The article and the idea sank without much [...]
We need a Patient Explanation of Sensible Keynesianism
The political debate in the UK is now all about the size of the state. A recession kicked off by the greed and risk taking of the bankers and financiers has been allowed to flip into a war between the parties about how much public services can and should be cut as we look down [...]
Towards a Reformed Conservatism? I don’t think so.
The big political event in Britain over the last week was the launch of Phillip Blonds’ new Tory think tank ResPublica. I’ve known Phillip for a few years – since he was a humble academic in far flung Cumbria – and have watched him move at incredible speed to the centre of debate under the [...]
The Principles of Communal Reciprocity
Jerry Cohen’s camping-trip fable offers a down-to-earth approach to social-democratic principles. Being a socialist often requires a leap of faith. Though there are real institutions we can point to that at least in part embody key socialist values such as equality and community – the NHS of course springs to mind – the cause of [...]
The missed Opportunities of the Labour Party Conference
I have just returned from the British Labour Party’s annual conference. It was a sobering affair. Gordon Brown and his ministers are trying to start a ‘fight back’ against the Conservatives who, at the start of the week, held a commanding lead in the opinion polls. This is a tough ask. Any party that has [...]
The Social Democratic Challenge
Social democracy, in any meaningful sense of the word, has been in crisis for decades. Even amongst the Nordics the game for years has been accommodation to capital and not leadership of it. In the immediate post-war years social democracy set the agenda, next came a period of capital accommodating itself to our social agenda [...]
