BARRY WINTER considers the prospects for the left after the 2010 election. He argues that any future centre left alliance must include socialists, and that the politics of the city can play an important role in reconnecting the left.

‘Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a [...]

The Dronfield Blather blog has run a three-month campaign to get manifestos from the Labour leadership candidates. This week it published the responses of all five Labour leader hopefuls.
‘On 16 June we commenced a campaign to get the candidates in the Labour Leadership Election to issue what we called “Manifestos of Intent”,’ says the website, run [...]

STEVE THOMPSON commends the grassroots movements seeking alternatives to economic growth
The current edition of New Internationalist (NI434. July/August 2010) tackles what I consider  to be one of the most crucial problems we face today, perhaps the most crucial. Headlined ‘Life beyond growth’, it deals with the conundrum that economic growth is not environmentally sustainable and [...]

On 27th August the ILP’s oldest member, Jennie Cuthbert, celebrates her 90th birthday.
Jennie joined the ILP in 1942. She was taken to an ILP Summer School in Bangor by her aunt, Anne Hambley. Anne had been a member for many years and the visit to Bangor was a reward for Jennie gaining a first class [...]

Three months in Spain
The British Battalion at Madrigueras and Jarama
Saturday 7 August, 2pm
People’s History Museum
Left Bank
Spinningfields
Manchester M3 3ER

FREE ENTRY
Historian Dr. Richard Baxell lectures on the day-to-day experiences of the British and Irish volunteers in The Spanish Civil War, during the early part of 1937.
The lecture will include audio and video clips from some of the [...]

So this is the new politics. On 22 June chancellor George Osborne’s budget unveiled the government’s intention to cut public spending harder and faster than any time since the second world war.
Despite prime minister David Cameron’s claims that the budget would somehow “protect the poor”, and Osborne’s now infamous remark that “we’re all in this [...]

Radical sociologist DAVID HARVEY provides a clear and concise analysis of the recent financial crisis and asks if it’s time to look beyond capitalism to a new social order.
“Any sensible person now would join an anti-capitalist organisation,” he says. “We have a duty to change our mode of thinking.”
Click here for Harvey’s RSA lecture in [...]

The following is a statement – ‘a modest perspective’ – prepared by the ILP’s National Administrative Council for discussion at the 2010 ILP Weekend Seminar, ‘After the Election, What Next for the Left?’, to be held in Scarborough on 5-6 June. We hope it will stimulate comment and debate here on the website, at the [...]

We must reject the lies and misrepresentations in this phoniest of elections, says HUGO RADICE
This week’s major intervention in the election campaign has surely been the call by the Institute for Fiscal Studies for the major parties to ‘come clean’ about their strategies for reducing the public sector debt, if elected. The IFS report has chimed [...]

Time for the Tobin tax?
Gary Kent argues that the financial crisis makes the case for a transaction tax even more compelling
Taking the temperature at Copenhagen
William Brown reflects on the disappointing outcome to climate change talks in Copenhagen
Lies, hubris and neo-liberalism
Barry Winter examines how capitalism went from boom to bust and where it leaves us
How to let a good [...]