Lake Champlain from the municipally owned waterfront, Burlington, Vermont: Nagaraju.ramanna, some rights reserved
Labour’s leaders are creating a new twenty-first century socialist political economy for their party – and one that may require reaching back to some of the left’s lost radical traditions in order to achieve it.
Beneath all the Sturm und Drang in the media caused by a bitter faction of the Parliamentary Labour Party in semi-open revolt against the most democratically elected leader in their history, something very interesting is taking place in British politics. Between them, Jeremy Corbyn and his Shadow Chancellor and close ally John McDonnell are quietly putting together a viable economic alternative to neoliberal austerity – and one, moreover, with a direct focus on democratised ownership of the economy at its core. “Co-operatives, shared ownership, and workplace democracy,” McDonnell has stated, “all have a central role to play here” – “here” being at the heart of what he has called “the new economics.”
