Three things were revealed by the recent wave of nationwide student protest. Firstly, the demonstrations represent a new political mood, that can manifest itself in excess and formless anger. Secondly, they cannot go on as unwieldy, monolithic marches. Thirdly, a new infrastructure is proving capa
The last time this happened, the British government was hoping to combine a modern-looking commitment to nation-building with the old imperial aim of political domination. Wilkileaks shows that all too little has changed.
Social democracy is in crisis, and has been proven inadequate everywhere. We cannot just turn back the clock, and reheat the old progressive story. Instead, we are going to have to break with the politics of the past.
We must question the assertion that the Coalition government is a radical administration, on a par with the 1945 Attlee and 1979 Thatcher governments. That judgment can only be made retrospectively, in view of the legacy the Con-Dems leave behind.
We are not all in this together. Benefit changes and service cuts will have cumulative and often profoundly disruptive and painful effects on the lives of poor people, especially as they interact with existing deprivations and difficulties. Citizen's Advice Bureau adviser Deborah Padfield sets out
After the vigour and excitement of the student demonstrations against the cuts, today’s Guardian leader derides Unite’s new general secretary Len McCluskey as a ‘Bourbon’. Why? Because he proposes trade union action and strikes rather than defeatist acceptance of the government’s unjust and counte
A scribe of Britain's Labour establishment had died
What is the real nature of the government's legislation on higher education; what will be the consequences; and what relationship does it have to reducing the deficit? An important exchange on this issue is taking place here, between Alan Finlayson and Tony Curzon Price. Now a striking contributio
The measuring of official policy by its impact on the quality of human life is progress. But only if the governments that proclaim the idea are serious, says David Boyle.
A friendly movement of flash protests against corporate tax avoidance when much needed public support is being cut captures public interest in the UK
Thursday’s narrow victory on the tuition fees bill marked the first major blow to the Coalition. The bill passed, but at a price of serious internal division within the Liberal Democrat party, and having given rise to a nationwide protest movement, raising a number of important issues beyond highe
This essay traces the cultural embodiment of the British state in ‘English Literature’ in the period from 1790 to 1810, its uses and abuses, and the demise of this seminal metaphor for the ‘nationless nation’ which began in the 1970’s. The latter period saw a post-imperial unravelling of the cultu
