Labour and co-operative responses to the crisis in the education system is the subject of the ILP’s next Unbalanced Britain meeting in Sheffield on Saturday 4 March. With speakers Melissa Benn and Julie Thorpe, the seminar will examine how changes to the education system have increased inequality and widened the gap between the privileged few...
Radical Solutions to the Housing Crisis
Housing and planning expert Duncan Bowie has produced a blueprint for Labour Party housing policy in a new publication that argues for an integrated approach on land, taxation, planning and public investment to provide radical solutions to the growing crisis....
Unbalanced Britain: Benn to put Education in the Spotlight
Education will come under the spotlight at the ILP’s next Unbalanced Britain seminar on 4 March when writer and campaigner Melissa Benn will speak about the Labour Party’s response to the last decade of education reforms....
New Labour and the Roots of Labour’s Crisis, Part 2
HARRY BARNES continues his investigation of the state of Labour, looking at the failures of the Miliband leadership, the basis for Jeremy Corbyn’s triumph and the prospects for party unity. I have never met Ed Miliband and only went to hear one or two of his platform speeches. However, I do feel that he was...
New Labour and the Roots of Labour’s Crisis, Part 1
In the first of a two-part examination of the state of the Labour Party, HARRY BARNES looks at the roots of Jeremy Corbyn’s rise and the Party’s turmoil. He begins with New Labour’s emergence after the death of John Smith. I start by referring to a period during my own time as an MP when...
The Housing Crisis Analysed
The ILP has launched a new pamphlet based on its Unbalanced Britain seminar on the housing crisis held in Leeds in March this year....
Stand by Conference Policies
HARRY BARNES calls for the Labour’s leadership candidates to stand by the party’s current policies as decided by party conference, and by future conferences. The Labour leadership candidates should be pushed to come to an agreement to stand by party policies as these have been (and will come to be) agreed by Labour Party conference....
‘An Idea Whose Time Has Come’
A universal basic income could be one of the big progressive policies at the next election according to campaign group Compass which has published a report on the issue, saying it’s “an idea whose time has come”....
Labour’s Nuclear Question
Can Labour find a way to bridge its divisions over Trident? Or will a policy to scrap the nuclear warheads strike a final nail into the party’s electoral coffin? BARRY WINTER calls for a national debate and a Labour-led referendum on the issue....
Rethinking Housing
In November 2015 Labour’s Leeds North East MP Fabian Hamilton launched the Building Homes for Britain report. Here, its researcher and editor SIMON JOSE outlines the report’s core ideas and explains why a complete rethink of housing policy is needed. For decades the housing market has trundled towards the chaotic state it is in today....
The Housing Crisis Weaponised
The government does not intend to solve our housing crisis, says QUINTIN BRADLEY. Instead it is using it as a weapon of policy against the beliefs and attitudes that sustain the welfare state....
Housing in Crisis: Resisting the Bill & Building Alternatives
“It’s clear the Tories are destroying the welfare state and we have to do whatever we can to stop them,” said ILP chair David Connolly as he drew the organisation’s well-attended Unbalanced Britain seminar on the housing crisis to a close in Leeds last weekend. Connolly’s cry for action came at the end of a...