Tag Archives for Jeremy Corbyn
Does age now trump class in British politics?
After higher youth turnout in the 2017 general election Labour has to think hard about whether fairness is about class or cohort Labour’s surprise success in June’s election, gaining 32 seats and winning 40 per cent of the popular vote, has quickly been absorbed within a new narrative about the rise of youth. Before the election, the conventional wisdom was … Continue reading
Has the salience of ‘saving’ in British political discourse declined?
The practice of saving has been complexified, but the concept has until recently retained discursive significance as part of an ‘asset-based welfare’ agenda. The 2017 election may, however, have signalled a significant shift in British economic statecraft The value of saving has been preached by the leaders of both main political parties in the UK for a considerable period of … Continue reading
The proletariat problem: general election 2017 and the class politics of Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn
The election continued the swing of working-class voters to the Conservative Party – but also the more important trend of working-class disengagement from politics. Can Labour respond without succumbing to populism? The general election was peculiar for a large number of reasons. One of those reasons, relatively overlooked to date, is that – amid some stunning victories in affluent areas … Continue reading
The odd case of Jeremy Corbyn’s increasingly right-wing Labour Party
Labour’s recent economic policy positions highlight a curious rightwards drift under Corbyn and McDonnell The chaos and dissent so obvious within the UK Labour Party since its 2015 General Election defeat has helped to cover up its actual dearth of policies. It is by no means incumbent on any Opposition to put forward a fully-worked-out roster of actual plans, especially … Continue reading
Does Labour have any good choices before it?
Corbyn’s opponents and supporters must find common causes if Labour is to avoid long-term damage to the party Craig Berry’s excellent recent SPERI blogs, in which he analysed Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party as a movement which is at one and the same time ‘utopian’ and ‘authoritarian’, did an incisive job of laying bare some of the contradictions that now lie … Continue reading
The battle for Labour: competing visions of representation
Do parties exist to represent the views of members, or to organise and represent a diverse range of interests and views? Answering this question is key to Labour’s future. In his recent trilogy of blog posts on Corbynism, Craig Berry argues that the Corbyn movement is best understood as an uneasy alliance between two distinct groups: old leftists, who, after … Continue reading
The politics of reforming capitalism in Britain: Part I
The Labour approach being shaped by Corbyn and McDonnell has yet to find a politics that will work and will not do so if it comes to be seen as fundamentally anti-capitalist With Jeremy Corbyn emphatically re-elected to the leadership of the Labour Party and Theresa May basking still in the glow of her sudden elevation to Downing Street, it’s … Continue reading
Corbynism, martyrdom and the other Labour split – part II
Labour will not split, but Corbynism might – Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party depends on a large group of activists increasingly uneasy with his approach to politics Part I of this post explored the phenomenon of Corbynism in relation to political ‘martyrdom’, arguing that Jeremy Corbyn and his key allies offer a destructive form of utopian politics. Suddenly … Continue reading
Corbynism, martyrdom and the other Labour split – part I
Jeremy Corbyn’s destructive utopianism has been reaffirmed by Labour Party members – but there are signs of a widening divergence among Corbyn’s support base, with uncertain implications for Labour’s future After the emphatic re-election of Jeremy Corbyn as Leader of the Labour Party, speculation that the Labour Party might split in two is intensifying. It remains uncertain whether any of … Continue reading
Jeremy Corbyn: a Polanyian critique
Corbynism represents a ‘fictitious commodity’ in the UK’s political marketplace Supporters of Jeremy Corbyn would be forgiven for assuming that, if one were to assess Corbynism – an admittedly crude term for the perspective of the Labour Party’s current leader and his main allies – through the prism of Karl Polanyi’s dialectical framework, the perspective represents a historical ‘counter-movement’. As … Continue reading
Labour and 2020 – looking forward, not back
The current polls are poor but electoral success will rely on a mass mobilisation campaign and increasing voter turnout There have been a number of opinion pieces and blogs recently that have presented a very negative outlook on Labour’s chances at the general election in 2020. Glen O’Hara’s recent blog for SPERI drew on current and historic polling data to … Continue reading
The real ‘new politics’ of post-crisis Britain: Part II
Austerity is anchored in a new politics of place, but Labour is adrift In part I of this post, I argued that, through the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ agenda, the Conservative government had successfully exploited post-crisis anxieties about place to justify its ongoing austerity crusade. In this second part, I argue that Labour has been too slow to grasp the centrality of … Continue reading
Berry’s ‘disoriented left’ and the possibilities of an alternative
Connecting abstract ideas about political economy with people’s everyday lives is what politics in the UK should now be about Craig Berry’s paper, ‘The disoriented left? Growth model failure and the nascent politics of a transformative narrative’ is a most welcome contribution to a debate around the political economy of the UK. This debate has largely been limited by a … Continue reading
‘Old’ leftism, made new?
An important part of the ‘Millennial’ appeal of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK and Bernie Sanders in the US lies in the economic insecurity of younger generations In my last SPERI Comment, I highlighted some of the new realities of the neo-gilded age: huge economic and wealth inequality, long-term wage stagnation and the mounting problem of student loan debt. I … Continue reading
Corbynomics: Part 1
Although sharing many of the biases of the ‘alternative economic strategy’ developed on the left in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s, Corbyn’s economic programme is as yet no more than a pale reflection of the ideas of that era Corbynomics is high on aspiration, low on detail. The aspirations were set out in a short document produced by the … Continue reading
What next for Labour’s ABC tendency
The party desperately needs to go back and come fully to terms with what went right and what went wrong during the Blair/Brown era Many words have been spilled already on the Corbyn phenomenon and more will be added today as Labour’s new leader speaks to the party conference for the first time. The winners of elections always necessarily generate … Continue reading
‘Understanding the Corbyn surge’ by Professor Andrew Gamble
A new essay by Professor Andrew Gamble, Professorial Fellow at SPERI, published by Policy Network, analyses the causes and impact of the Corbyn phenomenon. Professor Gamble argues that the politics of austerity and rising inequality have fuelled a powerful sense that ‘there must be a better alternatives‘, while old models of economics and politics are being discredited. Corbyn’s victory is … Continue reading
SPERI teach-in event on ‘Corbynomics’
On Wednesday October 28th SPERI will hold a teach-in event to explore the economic policies put forward by Jeremy Corbyn in his successful campaign to be elected as Labour Party Leader. The so-called ‘Corbynomics’ ideas were first set out in July in Jeremy Corbyn’s policy document ‘The Economy in 2020’. Since then a significant debate about the ideas has begun, … Continue reading
You wanted it, you got it
New Labour offered change for two decades, without ever really meaning it. Jeremy Corbyn is the near-inevitable consequence The remarkable emergence of Jeremy Corbyn from the relative obscurity of Labour’s backbenches has taken most political commentators by surprise – and indeed Corbyn himself. In hindsight, however, it seems to make perfect sense, especially once the implications of Ed Miliband’s changes … Continue reading
The Anglo-American Centre-Left and the immediate question of agency
The Democrats and the Labour Party have been on the defensive for too long. Winning again requires a progressive re-radicalization of politics The primary problem faced by the Centre-Left in both the US and the UK is not ultimately one of programme. Adequate policy proposals abound. The problem lies rather in the lack of electoral support for such proposals, and … Continue reading →
18 September 2017 by David Coates
Categories: SPERI Comment | Tags: Bernie Sanders, centre-left, Democratic Party, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour | Leave a comment