State of the unions
Probably the biggest reason for the ongoing debilitation and theoretical disorientation of the British far left is the secular decline of wider working class organisation in the wake of the defeat of the miners’ strike.
There are three main reasons for this. The first is that the labour movement frankly still has not recovered from the [...]
Dialectics of New Labourism: the Blair-Brown contradiction
It can’t have been easy being the son of Ralph Miliband; I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that the adolescent David had to sit through lectures on dialectical materialism instead of getting the standard dad talk on the birds and the bees.
At any rate, given his Oxford first in PPE, Britain’s next prime [...]
David Miliband: criticising Cameron is not enough
The first rule of Fight Club – according to Tyler Durden, hero of the Chuck Palahniuk novel of that very name – is that you do not talk about Fight Club; the second rule of Fight Club is that you do not talk about Fight Club.
Similar stipulations seem to apply to the current undeclared contest [...]
Come back, Sir Anthony Meyer
The poor chap is long dead now, and his name probably means little to anyone under 30. I had to Google him up to make sure of the details myself.
But the late Sir Anthony John Charles Meyer, 3rd Baronet, sounds like quite an engaging character for a Tory MP. For a start, there was his [...]
John McDonnell mulls new leadership bid
This email – originally written on a parliament.co.uk account – has been widely circulated across the left this evening, so presumably I’m breaking no confidences by reproducing part of it here. The best part is, it’s all totally unofficial. Totally unofficial, you understand:
I write to you today in a strictly personal capacity. I have not [...]
Democracy, democratic centralism and John Molyneux
Back in the 1980s, I eagerly bought Socialist Worker every week, simply because each edition contained a few hundred words from my all-time journalistic hero Paul Foot.
My second favourite feature was the ‘Teach Yourself Marxism’ column, penned by John Molyneux, pictured left. I strongly admired his ability to condense complex Marxist ideas in an accessible [...]
After Glasgow East: party like it’s 1931
Those radio alarm clocks can be right inconsiderate little bastards sometimes. I turned in last night in the full expectation that New Labour would hold on to Glasgow East, if only just.
I awoke to hear that the seat – held by Labour or the far left for 80 years – had fallen to the Scottish [...]
Illegal filesharing: let it rock
If you are the bass player in Uriah Heap – the band pictured right – and happen to be reading this, please accept my apologies; I owe you guys some royalties.
Then again, I doubt very much whether all those cassettes that my friends and I swapped in the playground put that many dodgy 1970s heavy [...]
Radovan Karadzic: better victor’s justice than impunity
The English translation – ‘desk murderer’, or something like that – doesn’t bring home every connotation of the German noun Schreibtischtäter. It includes a certain element of contempt for functionaries empowered to issue death warrants from the comfort of their office.
Back in 1995, in his role as political head of Bosnia’s Serbian irredentist minority, it [...]
James Purnell welfare shake-up: same old story
Well shake it shake it up baby now. Twist and shout. But how much bigger can this week’s ‘biggest shake-up of the welfare state since the 1940s’ possibly be than ‘the biggest shake-up of the welfare state for 60 years’ unveiled by David Blunkett in 2005? And will the impending ‘Labour Blitz on Dole Scroungers’ [...]
