New Labour and educational attainment in Britain
A decade of New Labour in office has transformed Britain’s education system from “below average to above average”, Gordon Brown said today in his first major speech on education policy since becoming prime minister.
Up to a point. You can get chapter and verse on how the UK compares to other developed countries by downloading these [...]
The class politics of immigration controls
Two New Labour cabinet ministers have been wrong-footed after there turned out to be 300,000 more foreign nationals working in the UK than official figures had earlier suggested. The total is 1.1m, and not the 800,000 previously reported.
Officially, home secretary Jacqui Smith and Peter Hain, her counterpart at the Department of Work and Pensions, are [...]
Saudi Arabia: petrotheocracy on the brink of breakdown
Five years ago I spent several weeks on a journalistic assignment in Saudi Arabia. The vile nature of the theocratic dictatorship was readily apparent. With King Abdullah currently on a state visit to Britain, I’m reproducing an article I wrote on country for the leftwing newspaper Workers’ Liberty.
The Socialist Youth Network, youth wing of the [...]
What would a rational Marxist current look like?
With the meltdown in Respect, the implosion of the Scottish Socialist Party and the collapse of the Labour left, the proposition that organised Marxism in Britain is weaker than at any time for a century hardly requires much elaboration.
But if an intelligent, rational, humanist Marxist current were to exist – and it very plainly doesn’t [...]
The politics of the Respect split
I had promised myself not to post on Respect today and to pick a ‘real world’ subject instead. But developments are coming thick and fast and deserve some comment.
A meeting seeking a compromise conference delegation slate for Tower Hamlets fell to pieces in acrimony last night. Meanwhile, the Tower Hamlets council group has split into [...]
Afghanistan: no good options left
After almost 200 years as a plaything for the ambitions of the three strongest superpowers ever seen in history, attribution of blame for the hell that is Afghanistan today depends on the historical timeframe one chooses to deploy. But self-determination never even got a look in.
In the nineteenth century, the country became the focus of [...]
New left party project: dead
Hey, you. Yes you, George Galloway. And you, Arthur Scargill. Not to mention comrades Tommy Sheridan, John Rees and Lindsey German, with Alan Thornett picking up a special Oscar for best supporting actor.
Thanks to you guys, the prospect of a viable party to the left of New Labour emerging in Britain is now deader even [...]
Respect crisis: response from the rest of the far left
The continuing collapse of Respect has reached the point at which not even the Socialist Workers’ Party can maintain its traditional aloofness in such matters and is forced to put its position publically. Hence an editorial in this week’s Socialist Worker:
Socialist Worker has never been one of those papers obsessed with the manoeuvres of left [...]
Terminology for discussing political Islam
Like almost all commentators these days, I strictly observe the distinction between Islam the religion and Islamism as a set of political ideas. But helpful as such differentiation is, it is still insufficient.
That’s why I have recently made an unwanted debut on Islamaphobia Watch, with Martin Sullivan offering the following comment on an earlier post [...]
The EU reform treaty and the left
Of course the left in Britain should favour a referendum on the European Union reform treaty, an issue that will dominate official politics for months to come. But it needs to make absolutely certain it doesn’t line up with UKIP and the Daily Mail in the process.
A referendum is the only politically honest course for [...]
