Thatcher utilised three emergent themes: globalisation, social liberalism and the reconfiguration of class structure. She used the spirits of the age to drive her own key project - unfettered markets. There is plenty the left could learn here.

From April 2013 major changes to benefit provision in Britain will likely change both the social and spatial make-up of our cities. The squeezing out of poorer residents from London and elsewhere, raises an important question: exactly who has the ‘right’ to the city in contemporary Britain?

Away from the traditional circles of power, a new force has been working its way up to the surface of the Algerian political landscape: that of organised youth activism.

Whether or not the Women of the Wall will actually face arrest or detention on April 10 remains to be seen; that they have faced this in the past only to return in greater numbers is a testament to the righteous chutzpah necessary to transform the gendered discrimination at Judaism's holiest site.

In Egypt we have a lot of people who are dirt poor, and a thin stratum that has lavish spending habits. They spend their money on things that are trivial and just plain inconsiderate when it comes to their fellow citizens.

On the eve of the tenth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, former organiser in the Stop the War movement and Iraq hostage negotiator, Anas Altikriti, says Iraq has never been closer to a civil war.

Wander into post-Olympics East London, lift your gaze, and what do you see? The awful warning of late-Soviet homogenisation.