Former Labour MP Harry Barnes has called for Labour’s leadership candidates to issue ‘Manifestos of Intent’ to explain their intended programme and help members decide who to vote for....
Labour’s Fightback Will Be Harder Than We Can Yet Imagine
David Cameron may have returned to Downing Street with a thin majority, but Labour must not kid itself. Coming back from this defeat will be very hard. The road to recovery will be far tougher than the route Labour has just tried and failed to plot, argues ANDREW HARROP....
Why Labour Needs to Change
Like many on the left, the election result came as a nasty shock to JONATHAN TIMBERS. Yet despite the desperate outlook, he believes a future Labour government is possible if the party becomes a very different kind of organisation. Some on the left say they do not expect to see another Labour government in their...
Scotland’s Referendum: Why the Left Should Oppose Independence
Far from being a certain route to social democracy, as some suggest, Scottish independence is a short-cut to nowhere, says WILL BROWN. We need a longer term strategy for a progressive unionist future. A key argument on the left of centre in Scotland, repeated this week by George Monbiot in the Guardian, is that independence...
A Tale of Two Speeches
Labour leader Ed Miliband and the party’s policy review chief Jon Cruddas made separate but complementary speeches recently that merit thoughtful consideration, says BARRY WINTER....
The Case For Public Ownership
Arguments for public ownership did not start with Sidney Webb, nor end with Tony Blair, says HARRY BARNES. Once we create the conditions, we might be surprised at just how revolutionary our gradualism can become....
The Need for Engagement
Merely denouncing ‘One Nation Labour’ as more of the same is a political cul-de-sac, argues MATTHEW BROWN. We need to recognise some genuine attempts to rethink the left’s project and engage with the best of their ideas....
Jon Cruddas talks to James Purnell
Jon Cruddas MP, the man in charge of Labour policy review, was interviewed by James Purnell of the Institute of Public Policy Research during a fringe meeting at Labour Party conference in Manchester....
Beyond Blue Labour
Marc Stears, Professor of Political Theory at Oxford University, spoke at Leeds University earlier this month on democracy and the politics of protest. BARRY WINTER reports....
Markets, Movements and Morals
BARRY WINTER reviews Tony Judt’s Ill Fares the Land, and finds the late academic’s fascinating account “both right and wrong” in its lament for social democracy. Born in London in 1948, Tony Judt taught at several British and American Universities. At New York University in 1995, he established an institute for the study of European...