Roosevelt is invoked more than ever amid talk of a ‘new deal’ for today’s crisis. Rather fewer, however, recall the woman at the heart of his programme.

A major problem in the Brexit debate since June 2016 is how 95 percent of reporting and discussion in the UK media has been about internal Westminster politics. Occasionally space is found for a brief interview with a minister or politician from an EU-27 government but only on condition that they speak perfect English. Pro-Brexit Conservative MPs […]

Eurostat has just published its latest unemployment figures. For the EU and Eurozone. Overall, they show continuing progress though youth unemployment remains seriously high. But the statistics do not explain why some countries have much higher rates of joblessness than others with Greece posting nearly ten times the rate of unemployment as the Czech Republic […]

We now have a glimpse into the hard Tory vision of how a fully Brexited Britain will treat Europeans who want to work here. All during the 20th century after 1945, Britain had to import workers to do the jobs the sturdy white Englishman didn’t want to do. 200,000 Polish ex-soldiers after 1945 were sent […]

European Works Councils (EWCs) are a living, functioning embodiment of Social Europe and the core EU concept that workers should have rights and, in exchange for accepting cross-border market liberalisation, including movement of workers between different labour markets, employees of Europe-wide firms must be consulted and informed. A little known advantage of being in the […]

I was asked by a German friend to explain what is happening inside the British Labour Party. This is what I sent him. In 2011 I organised a conference in northern England bringing together top Labour historians and senior MPs from the 1980s like David Owen and Gerald Kaufman. It was called “Labour 1931, 1951, […]

The drift to illiberal Pop-Nat – populist nationalist – politics in Europe continues. Across the Atlantic Donald Trump exemplifies Pop-Nat politics. There is no sign that the grip of Orban-Kaczynski style politics is weakening.  They represent the soft EU version of Putin-Erdogan political control. Elections are held. A market economy exists. People can travel and publish. But […]

The paradox of the EU referendum campaign is that all of Mr Cameron’s political foes want him to win and many of his political comrades want him to lose and hand over to an isolationist Prime Minister. So far the campaign has been a civil war in the Conservative Party rather like the legendary Irish […]

Has any historian of democratic left parties that form governments examined the phenomenon of how long they have to stay in opposition before they once again return to power? Labour is currently indulging in a ritual of seeking to answer the question why it lost the 2015 election with different elements of the party from […]

As the Commons begins to discuss the Brexit plebiscite how should Labour handle the referendum?  By far the most important intervention was not a speech in the EU referendum bill debate but the warning from a troika of pro-European union leaders – Frances O’Grady of the TUC, Dave Prentis of Unison and Sir Paul Kenny of the […]

The people of Britain are poised for one of the biggest decisions in our history. In 2017, while the rest of Europe celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Treaty in Rome, I believe Britain will leave the European Union unless there is a major change of direction in British politics. The most important change in […]

In 1914, as he was leading his men at the Battle of the Marne General Foch, the best of all the French fighting generals told his chiefs in Paris: ‘My centre is giving way. My right is retreating. The situation is excellent. I am attacking.’ And indeed in one of the greatest manoeuvres ever seen […]