Ou sont les jeunes gauchistes?
Signs of life on the Labour left. I got an email today detailing the launch meeting for a new campaign that will go by the moniker of Public Services Not Private Profit, sponsored by an impressive tally of 14 trade unions. Backers are predominantly smaller unions with ex-Trot or ex-tankie general secretaries, including RMT, FBU, [...]
Blindingly obvious
Here’s an official Labour Party press release, issued last Tuesday: ‘John Prescott MP, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, today called on David Cameron to publish details of all Conservative Party loans. ‘John Prescott MP said: “Following Labour’s decision in the interests of transparency to publish the full list of names and amounts of all [...]
Newsflash: ISM dissolves
The International Socialist Movement – politically the hegemonic grouping in the Scottish Socialist Party – has dissolved after five years of existence. The move wasn’t entirely unexpected. A statement issued to explain why is unusually self-critical for a tendency rooted in the broad Trotskyist tradition. In effect, the ISM puts its hands up and explicitly [...]
Arms and the man
Arms dealer Wafic Said was a major financial supporter of the Tory Party in the 1990s. According to today’s Sunday Times, the little inconvenience of a ban on foreign donations hasn’t put a stop to that. ‘The Tories under David Cameron have accepted £100,000 from the wife of a foreign arms dealer barred from making [...]
To cringe before the rich man’s frown
The Conservatives have confirmed that hedge fund boss Michael Hintze lent the party £2m – and gave it £250,000 – ahead of the last general election. He can afford it, of course. It seems he pays himself £60m a year through the Cayman Islands registered company CQS. The main reason companies that operate in London [...]
Chavez and the international far left
Venezuela is one of the most divisive issues on the international far left today. Groups such as Socialist Appeal in Britain and Democratic Socialist Perspective in Australia have become enthusiastic de facto Chavistas. Others – such as the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty in the UK – advance an almost anarchist critique of the Bolivarian regime. [...]
Imperialism and globalisation
Heavyweight Marxist theory alert. Consider what follows as the blogging equivalent of a full-length weekend newspaper supplement think piece. I’m happy to take on any hardcore Trot headbangers out there who fancy a Lenin quotefest on this one. Normal people may well have better things to do with their spare time. As is always the [...]
Top of the economist pops
The name is a bit of a joke, and many will find it just a little insulting, too. But the post-autistic economics movement – led by Bernard Guerrien and backed by a whole bunch of Cambridge PhDs – is a serious enough idea. You’d expect nothing less, given that heavyweight intellectual backers include Galbraith and [...]
Teenage depression
First-hand experience of long-term youth unemployment in the early Thatcher years is one of the main reasons I became a socialist. So today’s revelation that the number of post-GCSE teenagers without a job has trebled since Labour came to office leave me feeling angry, on both a political and a personal level. According to a [...]
Best practice in child-rearing
As Gilbert and Sullivan – and not either Gilbert O’Sullivan or Gilbert and George – observed as long ago as 1882: Then let’s rejoice with loud fal la – fal la la! That nature always does contrive – fal la la! That every boy and every girl That’s born into the world alive Is either [...]
