Whether in recycling or energy policy, a deeper crisis in long-term thinking is apparent in Scotland. With the new Budget looming, MATT KERR wonders if we can move beyond shallow, headline-grabbing measures
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The left, work and benefits. Eating the rich?
Starmer’s slash-and-burn approach to disability benefits represents a fundamental break with Labour’s founding mission to challenge the idle rich rather than punish the vulnerable poor, argues KEITH FLETT
Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves (second from left) during an investment roundtable discussion with Black Rock CEO Larry Fink and members of the BlackRock executive board at 10 Downing Street, London, November 21, 2024
From mass protests to plummeting poll numbers on immigration and health policy, and from devastating cuts to Medicaid and Medicare to the anti-science upheaval at federal health agencies, the president’s agenda is radicalising voters against him, argues JOHN LISTER
Ahead of elections next year, Scottish Labour is seeking to jump-start its political fortunes – but without bringing wealth and wealth production under democratic control, the party’s future looks in doubt, says VINCE MILLS
In part IV of a serialisation of his new book, JOHN McINALLY tells how austerity minister Francis Maude’s attempt to destroy the PCS Civil Service union totally backfired
Building is the solution for much of our housing crisis – and will also help to address poverty, ill health, and even anti-social behaviour and alienation, writes KENNY MacASKILL
MAT COWARD advocates cultivating blackberries, a growing in popularity crop for gardens and allotments
THE former Labour prime minister Harold Wilson argued that the labour movement owed more to Methodism than Marx. Socialists will dispute that but there is no doubt that in the 19th century a good deal of the imagery and words used in workers’ struggles came from the Bible. That is not a surprise when its considered that Marx’s Capital was not available in English until 1887.
One line from the Bible (Thessalonians) which was much used in the first decades of the 19th century and remains relevant now is “he that does not work neither shall he eat.”
It’s a view that is firmly lodged in the mind of right-wing social democracy. After Labour was elected in 1997, Tony Blair tried to push through welfare cuts — in that case to incapacity benefits — and suffered in May 1998 a rebellion of 80 Labour MPs.
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While Hardie, MacDonald and Wilson faced down war pressure from their own Establishment, today’s leadership appears to have forgotten that opposing imperial adventures has historically defined Labour’s moral authority, writes KEITH FLETT
The formation of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900 marked the beginning of interconnected and contested strategies — parliamentary and industrial — seeking ways to advance working-class interests, writes KEITH FLETT
Modern Christmas as we know it, with its trees, dinner menu, cards and time off from work, only dates back to the early days of modern socialism as we know it, writes KEITH FLETT, checking in on Marx, Engels and the Chartists in the 1800s
Forget Farage and the recent daft demands for a new election against Labour: the greatest petition Britain has ever known gathered millions of names demanding the right to vote — and it didn’t work either, writes KEITH FLETT