When do you have to lie?
Editorial // Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, James Stafford
Conservative dishonesty over Brexit has backed Labour into a dangerous corner. We ask whether the time has come when we need to start telling the truth about the terms Britain can realistically seek to Brexit on.
The global financial crisis and its history: responses to Adam Tooze’s Crashed
Roundtable // Grace Blakeley, Sahil Jai Dutta, Anahí Wiedenbrug
Adam Tooze’s Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World (2018) centres on two areas –the daily operations of international finance, and the shifting configurations of global geopolitics – that still confuse and alienate socialist thinkers and movements. We gather three perspectives on the book’s central arguments, and how they differ from other dominant analyses of our current moment.
Socialism, (neo)liberalism, and the Treaties of Rome
Essay // Brian Shaev
Revisiting socialist debates on the Treaties of Rome (1957) opens a window onto early conceptions of the potential of a European common market – and Labour’s capitulation to the sovereigntist dogmas of late-imperial Britain.
Social democracy and the ‘Europe Question’: lessons from Weimar?
Essay // Marius Ostrowski
Confronted by the catastrophe of the First World War and the fractured Europe of the 1920s, German social democrats attempted to rethink relationship between economic integration and international cooperation. They arrived at a complex synthesis between European federation, protectionism and free trade.
Labour’s international development policy: internationalism, globalisation, and gender
Review // Charlotte Riley
Labour’s 2018 policy paper, ‘A world for the many not the few’, sets out a Corbynite aid policy with a new conception of Britain’s role in the world, putting gender and power at the heart of development.
What does a left-wing foreign policy look like?
Review // George Morris
In his new book, Michael Walzer argues that the left needs to stop imagining that a better world will emerge from the struggle for justice at home, and develop a foreign policy that addresses state power and looks beyond the state. But serious, active solidarity, not debate on the left, is what will produce a meaningful left internationalism.
The poor always pay more: financial access to address marginalisation
Feature // Juvaria Jafri
Attempts to increase financial access for the poor have tended to create bifurcated banking systems, which systematically disadvantage those they are designed to include, and can exacerbate inequality. Institutional reforms are needed to make financial access more equal.
Citizen’s wealth funds, a citizen’s dividend and basic income
Essay // Duncan McCann, Stewart Lansley
A citizen’s wealth fund—built up via progressive taxation on wealth and the one-off issue of a long term government bond—has huge progressive potential.
Place-based policy and politics
Feature // Fabrizio Barca
Neoliberal ‘space-blind’ policy-making has failed; place-based policy-making must give power to local communities and destabilise the status quo in order to allow communities to escape from under-development traps. Unorthodox thinking and lessons from Italy’s Inner Areas Strategy suggest how this can be done.
