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Culture, History and Strategy, Realities 19th March 2019

State of the Union: Wales

Wales is the least interesting of the UK’s four constituent nations. No hegemony of population and class as in England, no surging separatist tide as in Scotland, no threat of reigniting an age-old tinderbox as in Northern Ireland. In Wales, there’s just one party. A single centre-left party that has managed Wales for nearly a hundred years, a fate that would surely…

Domestic Policy, Possibilities 4th March 2019

An Education Revolution

Year after year, the admissions figures for Oxford and Cambridge universities tell a grim story about the persistence of inequality in Britain. The privately-educated—seven percent of the population—make up roughly forty percent of admissions. The most privileged demographic groups make up eighty percent. These elite graduates go on to dominate the upper echelons of society, being disproportionately represented at Westminster, in the…

Realities 27th February 2019

Labour Members Sign Anti-Semitism Open Letter

We are Labour members who support Jeremy Corbyn in his leadership and the progressive, socialist programme and anti-racist principles of the Labour Party. We have seen antisemitism from Labour members and supporters, online or offline. We recognise that as a movement we have been too slow to acknowledge this problem, too tolerant of the existence of antisemitic views within our ranks, too…

Culture, Culture, Realities 27th February 2019

Review: Mark Fisher’s k-punk

In the world of British politics, Mark Fisher may be the most influential person you’ve never heard of. Swathes of the contemporary left are in his ideological debt, and the ideas with which he made his name: capitalist realism, hauntology- form the basis for large parts of what we understand as the “Corbyn project”. If you’ve ever gotten your news from Novara…

History and Strategy, Realities 22nd February 2019

Liberalism and Social Democracy

Political history doesn’t start in 1945. Most accounts of the post-war consensus pay tribute to the liberal influences of Keynes and Beveridge, and increasingly to the role of national and imperial sentiment in the myth of “Old Labour”. But more should be made of the UK’s largely forgotten first social democratic government; a government that united liberals and social democrats in finding,…

Culture, Realities 20th February 2019

The Spectator and Media Transphobia

The next time you hear transphobes claiming that their bigotry is born from a desire to “stand up for women”, simply point to their allies. It’s hard to imagine, say, Black Lives Matter running a joint event with UKIP, or Stonewall being bankrolled by the Coalition for Marriage. And yet so-called “feminists” are happy to join forces with those who actively work…