The Labour Party has squandered three years in addressing the challenge posed by the Brexit referendum.
Averting the death of social democracy
Reformist social democracy has just two problems that result in its crisis. The first is that it’s heading in the wrong direction. The second is that it’s heading in the wrong direction in the wrong way. If this crisis is to be averted then we need to understand why the ends and means are wrong […]
People’s Vote On Brexit: Be Careful What You Wish For
When thinking about Brexit and Europe, we should remember the words of Hans Magnus Enzensberger: short term hopes are futile – long term resignation is suicidal. Over two years on from the vote, and now heading fast for the Brexit door, progressives are still in a mess when it comes to Europe and are in danger […]
How Social Democrats Can Bring Real Change
How do social democrats change things? The traditional method has been to win elections, inhabit the state, pull the levers of the state and hey presto – social democracy. Here in the UK this approach is magnified because of our awful first past the post voting system, but most social democrats would rather not share […]
Five Radical Ideas For Beating Inequality
Scratch the skin of any social democrat and s/he bleeds equality. Because of structural weakness we water the concept down into social justice or fairness or we try and dress equality up with more complex ideas like ‘capabilities’. The problem is that we aren’t getting it, indeed we’re moving further away from it. The great […]
Zygmunt Bauman: A Beacon Of Hope In The Darkness
I don’t know what to do. A world that was getting darker suddenly turned pitch black. Zygmunt Bauman is dead. The towering intellectual colossus of our times and yet such a frail, slight and humble human being is gone. He lived an amazing life and was an amazing person. The brilliance of his mind and […]
Social Democracy Without Social Democrats? How Can The Left Recover?
UK Labour has suffered another bad set of election results. But the failure of Labour is not the fault of the Corbynites or the Blairites. Social democracy is in crisis the world over: obliterated in Greece, failing in government in France and in retreat almost everywhere else. Nowhere are social democrats ideologically, programmatically or organisationally […]
Towards A Social Democracy Based On Facebook Culture
If you were a European social democrat looking to Labour for light at the end of the left’s long and dark electoral tunnel last month then you would have been disappointed. But any cursory glance under Labour’s bonnet and a quick kick of the tyres would have told you this vehicle was never going to […]
Surfers Without Waves – Is Social Democracy Dead In The Water?
Is social democracy already dead and like the proverbial headless chicken are we simply running round the yard on instinct before we topple over for good? If social democracy is still alive, it’s hard to know how or why. Let’s look at the evidence. No social democratic party anywhere in the world is on the […]