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About Paul Mason

Paul Mason is a leading British writer and broadcaster and author of Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future.

integrated review

Lost an empire, not found a role

by Paul Mason on 15th March 2021

Paul Mason finds in the UK’s foreign and defence review a wilful refusal of its natural European engagement.

integrated review

Unsplendid isolation: Britain after ‘Brexit’

by Paul Mason on 18th January 2021

Paul Mason writes that a Biden US presidency allied to an EU pursuing ‘strategic autonomy’ leaves a ‘sovereign’ UK with a bit-part role.

integrated review

Barrelling towards the ‘Brexit’ cliff edge

by Paul Mason on 23rd November 2020

The most frightening thing is not the UK government’s end-game strategy, Paul Mason writes. It’s that there isn’t one.

integrated review

Golden Dawn verdict—no sunset for the far right

by Paul Mason on 12th October 2020

Paul Mason argues that with authoritarian conservatives in the White House and the Kremlin it’s no surprise the far right is thriving in Europe.

integrated review

Technological sovereignty—and a sepia-image Britain

by Paul Mason on 30th June 2020

Paul Mason bemoans how ‘Brexit’ has left the UK a beached whale in a world in need of technological regulation driven by European values.

integrated review

Brexit: deaths, more deaths … and no-deal calculations

by Paul Mason on 18th May 2020

In a nightmare-scenario ‘Brexit’ denouement, the UK government provokes no-deal chaos from which it hopes to profit after its Covid-19 shambles.

integrated review

How his ‘Brexit’ project explains Johnson’s dithering on Covid-19

by Paul Mason on 6th April 2020

Paul Mason explains how Boris Johnson’s idiosyncratic initial response to the coronavirus stemmed from his particularistic empire nostalgia.

integrated review

With the UK’s European door closed, it’s open season for xenophobia

by Paul Mason on 24th February 2020

Paul Mason explains how, even after the UK has technically left the EU, ‘Brexit’ has escalated into a culture war over immigration.

integrated review

Leaving Europe

by Paul Mason on 13th January 2020

Paul Mason turns in his Social Europe column from postcapitalism to the theme of post-Brexit Britain.

Manchester

The Manchester revolution

by Paul Mason on 23rd October 2019

Paul Mason reimagines the Manchester of his birth in a postcapitalist age—and raises the challenge of getting there.

Manchester

Could a progressive phoenix arise from the ashes of the UK’s political meltdown?

by Paul Mason on 10th September 2019

The solidly bourgeois Financial Times fears Labour could come to power with a potentially postcapitalist programme, Paul Mason writes.

time

Time for postcapitalism

by Paul Mason on 1st July 2019

Paul Mason continues his sketch of a postcapitalist world by drawing out its implications for something in increasingly short supply—time.

time

To the postcapitalist city … via Amsterdam circa 1619

by Paul Mason on 21st May 2019

What makes the 21st century city the harbinger of a postcapitalist world is that for the first time in modern history the network can transcend the market.

time

The new spirit of postcapitalism

by Paul Mason on 8th April 2019

Capitalism emerged in the interstices of feudalism and Paul Mason finds a prefiguring of postcapitalism in the lifeworld of the contemporary European city. Raval, Barcelona, March 2019. The streets are full of young people (and not just students)—sitting, sipping drinks, gazing more at laptops than into each other’s eyes, talking quietly about politics, making art, […]

postcapitalism

The unbearable unrealism of the present

by Paul Mason on 25th February 2019

Paul Mason begins a series of columns for Social Europe on the theme of postcapitalism and society, stressing the urgency of a new economic model. What characterises the present moment in history is a pervasive sense of unrealism among elites. Official discourses are no longer used as guides to action, laws are not applied and […]

Paul Mason

Reject Kaczyński’s Attack On The Rule Of Law In Poland

by Paul Mason on 16th February 2018

I want to start with some advice from George Orwell. In 1940, during the Dunkirk crisis, as the British elite made one blunder after another, Orwell wrote in his diary that, for about 10 years, left wing intellectuals had been able to predict events better than the Cabinet. Orwell said: it was not about any power to […]

Paul Mason

Commission White Paper Option Six: A Europe of Democracy And Social Justice

by Paul Mason on 6th March 2017

The White Paper by Jean-Claude Juncker on 1 March 2017 is a poor answer to the crisis of the European Union. In response, I am proposing that parties and movements committed to internationalism and social justice offer the following alternative to the five options Juncker outlines. I am throwing it out as a draft for discussion among […]

Paul Mason

Remain And Renegotiate! How To Stop The Brexit Bandwagon

by Paul Mason on 15th June 2016

Three Labour figures — Tom Watson, Ed Balls and Tristram Hunt — have, in the past 24 hours, called for a revision to the EU free movement rules. This needs to be translated into an immediate offer aimed at swinging the referendum for Remain. Labour has to explicitly embrace renegotiation of the EU Treaty. Currently the Leave vote is […]

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Social Europe Publishing book

With a pandemic raging, for those countries most affected by Brexit the end of the transition could not come at a worse time. Yet, might the UK's withdrawal be a blessing in disguise? With its biggest veto player gone, might the European Pillar of Social Rights take centre stage? This book brings together leading experts in European politics and policy to examine social citizenship rights across the European continent in the wake of Brexit. Will member states see an enhanced social Europe or a race to the bottom?

'This book correctly emphasises the need to place the future of social rights in Europe front and centre in the post-Brexit debate, to move on from the economistic bias that has obscured our vision of a progressive social Europe.' Michael D Higgins, president of Ireland


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Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

Renewing labour relations in the German meat industry: an end to 'organised irresponsibility'?

Over the course of 2020, repeated outbreaks of Covid-19 in a number of large German meat-processing plants led to renewed public concern about the longstanding labour abuses in this industry. New legislation providing for enhanced inspection on health and safety, together with a ban on contract work and limitations on the use of temporary agency employees, holds out the prospect of a profound change in employment practices and labour relations in the meat industry. Changes in the law are not sufficient, on their own, to ensure decent working conditions, however. There is also a need to re-establish the previously high level of collective-bargaining coverage in the industry, underpinned by an industry-wide collective agreement extended by law to cover the entire sector.


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Social protection during the pandemic: freelancers in the creative industries

This working paper identifies some key areas of policy intervention for advancing socially sustainable and fair solutions for freelancers working in the creative industries, who are among those who have suffered the most from the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic. In particular, the authors focus on those who work entirely on their own account, without employees (ie the ‘solo self-employed’), and who undertake project- or task-based work on a fixed-term basis.


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Industrial relations: developments 2015-2019

Eurofound has monitored and analysed developments in industrial relations systems at EU level and in EU member states for over 40 years. This new flagship report provides an overview of developments in industrial relations and social dialogue in the years immediately prior to the Covid-19 outbreak. Findings are placed in the context of the key developments in EU policy affecting employment, working conditions and social policy, and linked to the work done by social partners—as well as public authorities—at European and national levels.


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Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

#Care4Care!

It took us a global pandemic to realise that we depend on care. Despite all the clapping from the balconies, care workers continue to work in precarious and vulnerable conditions. Women, who represent 70% of the care workforce, continue to suffer from a severe lack of recognition for both their paid and unpaid care work. It’s time for a care revolution! It’s time to #Care4Care! The Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS), together with the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), has been intensively working since 2019 to monitor the EU gender equality policy agenda through a progressive lens focusing particularly on its care dimensions.


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