Over the last few months, a lot has been written about the new Berlin rent freeze – otherwise known as the Mietendeckel. The law has been in the legislative pipeline for some months, and the freeze was finally agreed to by the state cabinet, and then the Senate, in late October. The action is undoubtedly a positive one and a step in…
Alberto Smith & William Sorenson for LEFTA Cameron gambled, lost, and now we are all paying off his debts. The past three years have been squandered due to political manoeuvring in all the major parties. And instead of bridging the expectations gap and having an internal debate over what could heal the divides that have been laid bare by the EU referendum,…
The Labour Party’s divisions over Europe have always existed, although Brexit has brought them to unprecedented prominence. Instinctively, any strategist (armchair or otherwise) looking to unite the party on this issue is going to want to find a compromise position that combines a clear-eyed view of the necessity of at least avoiding No Deal, with the appearance of a streetwise aloofness towards…
Two days after Daniel Levy finished his compulsory service in the Israeli Defence Force, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. As part of his service, Levy had been working as a negotiator attached to the Oslo accords. The years leading up to this moment had been a small window of optimism in the struggle for peace between Israel and Palestine, and Rabin’s…
Recently I found myself considering the possibility of a World Parliament – something like a cross between the European Parliament and the United Nations – whose members would be elected proportionally to the population of each country. What would the political makeup of such an assembly be? As far as I’m aware no-one has yet bothered to try and work it out,…
Photo Credit: Wiki Political historians like to talk about ‘watershed’ elections—elections that, either immediately or in retrospect, act as milestones for a paradigm shift within the electorate and a tangible sea change in wider society. The UK is more than familiar with such moments. For students of politics, years like 1931, 1945, 1979, and 1997 are etched so indelibly in their consciousnesses…
Thirty years ago, the students of a bygone generation mourned the death of a reformer. Hu Yaobang was a political survivor and a veteran of the Civil War who’d become Deng Xiaoping’s right-hand man. Unfortunately, his enemies successfully pinned the 1986 student demonstrations on his lax attitude and he was forced out of power, dying in relative obscurity not long afterwards. Eventually,…
Capitalist realism maintains its cold, grey grip over Australian society. Australia’s conservative parties managed to barely win a majority at the federal election on May 18. The result was generally seen as a surprise with the election reported as Labor’s to lose. The conservatives lacked vision, were internally divided and putting the third parliamentary leader of their six-year term of government to…
