While Blairism said things could only get better, Starmerism says they can only stay the same. But voters aren’t crying out for a politics that ‘treads lightly’ on their lives — they want a politics that improves them.
Desperate to show a contrast to ‘old Labour’, Tony Blair took pride in upholding draconian anti-union laws and was happy confronting organised workers. But this belligerence created a new generation of trade unionists unafraid to challenge him and make things difficult for New Labour.
New Labour’s technocratic managerialism agenda involved ceding control of the Bank of England — a decision with profound consequences to this day. While unelected technocrats are able to hike interest rates and engineer economic slowdowns, workers will remain worse off.
The hollow and apolitical style that looks set to define a Keir Starmer government can’t survive a world riddled with profound crises. When this unambitious offer crumbles, the Left has to be prepared to answer seriously.
In the years after the Second World War, African independence fighters seized world attention, forcing democrats in Europe to reckon with problems of colonialism and freedom on the continent. Tribune’s historical journey towards emphatic support for African decolonisation leaves a record of enormous relevance for the anti-colonial left today.
Guitarist and vocalist of the iconic Sonic Youth sits down with Tribune to discuss his recently published memoir recounting a personal history of American rock and New York City counterculture.
For the first time, a new film reveals how at the height of the apartheid regime’s power, South African revolutionaries recruited and trained young British workers to assist them in the underground armed struggle to topple the racist state.
Under Ed Miliband’s leadership, Mark Fisher and Jeremy Gilbert wrote Reclaiming Modernity, which urged Labour to fight the neoliberal domination of workers’ lives, resist Britain’s endless marketisation — and harness the technological ambitions of the young century.
In ‘progressive’ Berlin, daring to treat Palestinians like they are human beings can destroy your life and your work — as thousands of artists and cultural institutions are now discovering.
In a harrowing dispatch from Gaza, Palestinian human rights activist and Gaza City resident Raji Sourani gives an account of daily life amid Israeli air strikes that are killing entire families. Despite it all, Palestinians in Gaza are clinging to hope.
