SIMON DUFF recommends a new album from renowned composer and oud player Anour Brahem.
The UK’s elective dictatorship
JOHN GREEN welcomes a significant contribution to the discussion of the urgent need to reform Britain’s failed governmental system
EXCESSIVE POWER: Prime Minister Boris Johnson during a meeting with military service chiefs at 10 Downing Street, London, September 2019
JAMES WALSH has a great night in the company of basketball players, quantum physicists and the exquisite timing of Rosie Jones
A New Awakening: Adventures In British Jazz 1966 - 1971, G3, and Buck Owens
JAMES WALSH is moved by an exhibition of graphic art that relates horrors that would be much less immediate in other media
RON JACOBS welcomes the translation into English of an angry cry from the place they call the periphery
GUILLERMO THOMAS recommends a useful book aimed at informing activists with local examples of solidarity in action around the world
HENRY BELL is provoked by a book that looks toward, but does not fully explore the question of who gets to imagine the shapes of cities to come
Failed State – Why Nothing Works and How We Fix it
By Sam Freedman, Macmillan, £20
FREEDMAN was until 2007, a member of the Labour Party, and has spent much of his working life at the heart of government, both as a civil servant in the Department for Education as a senior policy adviser to Michael Gove and as adviser to the leader of the then opposition. This, his first book, argues persuasively that the British government is not fit for purpose and explains in detail why.
He is not a Marxist and offers no class analysis, but it would by asinine to dismiss his critique on that basis. He provides an incisive analysis of what is wrong with our present system from an insider’s viewpoint. He argues that modern British history is best thought of “not as a story of decline but of a repeating series of crises that are eventually resolved.” “Our problem,” he goes on, “is the total failure of our political institutions to deal with the [even] more limited challenges we have.”
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RICHARD CLARKE recommends a hugely valuable text for those seeking theoretical analysis and practical action to defend public services
JOHN GREEN is disappointed by a marred critique of the British establishment by someone who was part of it
Labour must recognise Israel’s true aims of total colonisation of Palestine and massive regional expansion — and therefore end the arms sales and trade deals that enable the destruction of any two-state solution, writes HUGH LANNING
It is impossible to ignore the huge flaws in our unelected second chamber — yet despite Labour’s promises of consultation, PAULINE BRYAN argues that it is falling short of doing what’s needed to safeguard democracy