‘Labour – Preparing for Power’ is the title of Chartist’s annual open meeting and AGM to be held at the University of Westminster in London on Saturday, 8 July....
Labour Saves Itself, and Restores Hope
Labour’s unexpected ‘success’ in last week’s general election has been greeted with relief and joy across the left. But we need words of caution as well as cheers, says WILL BROWN, for there is still much to do to turn this opportunity into a real transformative victory. Given what seemed possible a few weeks ago,...
The Progressive Alliance and a War of Position
Is the Progressive Alliance an idea whose time has come? GERRY LAVERY thinks so after reading a new Compass pamphlet on the election initiative. The call for a Progressive Alliance starts from the idea that our electoral system gives the Conservatives a built-in advantage and enables them to govern nationally even though most people do...
The Age-Old Roots of Labour’s Current Crisis
Labour is facing an existential crisis, and parallels with the 1980s are painfully obvious. But the roots of the current crisis go much deeper, writes MARTIN WRIGHT. The Labour Party is the child of hope and compromise. Its political DNA was made from two main elements more than a century ago. One was the counter-cultural,...
Election 2017: The Choice is Simple
For A-level student student ROBIN EDEN, the Tories’ attack on the National Health Service makes the choice at the coming general election a straightforward one....
Re-balancing Education: Dear Labour Councillor…
BEN SELLERS wrote an angry and articulate open letter to Durham County councillors on his blog last month, following their decision to suspend plans to cut the pay of local teaching assistants. As part of our series on education, we are re-publishing his letter below, prefaced with an explanatory note from ILP chair DAVID...
Unbalanced Britain: Education and Inequality
MELISSA BENN examines the continuing inequalities in our education system, and the failures of recent governments to close the gaps. What could Labour do to promote an alternative vision? Despite endless policy initiatives, exhaustive reforms and official obeisance to the questionable aim of ‘social mobility’, our education system still has yawning gaps in outcomes between...
Red Noses For You
At a time when the UK aid budget is under concerted attacks from right-wing Tories, UKIP and the media, it might seem churlish to criticise one of the great ‘set piece’ British events that focus our attention on development in Africa. However, David Lammy’s Guardian comment is a necessary and welcome contribution to Red...
Back to the Future: Re-balancing Education
Every government since New Labour has made education its top priority yet inequality still runs through the system from top to bottom. So why have they failed and how can Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party win support for a return to the principles and values of the comprehensive system? That was the question raised by...
Brexit: Labour’s Fading Red Lines
Labour is in a mess over Brexit and its strategy for the forthcoming parliamentary votes on triggering Article 50 is a shambles. It did not have to be this way, argues WILL BROWN....
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....
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...