Private provision of public services
What should the left say about the continuing expansion of private sector input into public services? This question occurs to me after reading a story in the Financial Times this morning, detailing just how far this trend has gone: The private sector supply of public services now makes a bigger contribution to the economy than [...]
Christianophobia and the separation of church and state
Far from being on the margins of British life – as Conservative MP Mark Pritchard weakly tries to argue – Christianity maintains a prominence far in excess of that merited by its number of adherents. However much the Tories would like to see the emergence of a cohesive ‘religious right’ core vote in the UK, [...]
New Labour and poverty reduction
Surely the entire point of having an ostensibly left-of-centre political party is wealth redistribution; if it does not, when in government, act to reduce inequality by the time-honoured means of taking from the rich to give to the poor, what is the point of social democracy? For many progressive voters, this is the crucial yardstick [...]
