debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
Thanks very much for inviting me here this evening; not least because it allows me to talk about philosophy, society and socialism. Believe me as a Labour MP this does not happen very often. I have been a MP for ten years. I went with Tony Blair into Downing St in 1997 and spent three [...]
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 [...]
The former General Secretary of the Fabian Society and former adviser to Gordon Brown, Michael Jacobs, dealt with this question in his talk at the “Sustainability in a Good Society” conference that took place in London in December 2011. The conference was organised by the London office of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Compass and Social Europe Journal. [...]
The economic crisis has meant harsh austerity in a number of EU states. But even those that retain relatively sound macroeconomic fundamentals have engaged in belt-tightening wary of market reactions and rising spreads. The political economy of the EU is displaying worrying signs of decay, as Europe’s socio-economic model is undermined through strategies of fiscal [...]
In crisis times like the one we are living through at the moment, there are typically two aspects that have to be thought through thoroughly. The first is how to stop the progressing rot from the unfolding crisis and the second is how to reconstruct society in a more sustainable fashion so the same crisis [...]
Yet again banks have to be rescued because financial markets have gone wild. And because still no effective rules and regulations have been introduced to make banks pay for the high risks they are taking. It feels like “Groundhog Day”: Everything starts all over again, nobody seems to remember anything. Has anybody learned anything? After [...]
Winning progressive parties in the 1990s were those that had learnt the lessons of the 1980s: that division, disorganisation and an obsession with a core left vote was no way to win. As a consequence from Blair and New Labour to Schroeder and the SPD’s Neue Mitte, progressive parties in the ‘90s embraced change through [...]
In most European countries there is a majority of people who could be reached by social democratic values and politics. Nevertheless social democratic parties have not been able to convince this majority over recent years. Some of the reasons for this development have been policy-decisions of social democratic parties, especially in government. But our parties [...]
When the votes were counted after the re-election in the northeastern constituency of Örebro, the Social Democrats increased their votes in all electoral districts in the area, with a total of 47.2% of the votes. In no part of the constituency the result was less than 30.6% (which is what the Social Democrats received nationally [...]
There are two tales about party politics. In the first, political parties are moribund, if not on their last legs. Parties are said to have been in crisis or decline for decades and are believed to have lost virtually all their functions to the courts, the bureaucracy, the media, or powerful social organizations. Parties supposedly [...]
In analysing a key organisational challenge for social democracy, I recently wrote that “[s]ocial democratic parties are for the most part unable to engage the identities of citizens; they are perceived as campaign vehicles and administrators of certain ideas rather than core institutions of an extended ideological community.” I promised to follow up on this [...]
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