Reflections on the recent presidential elections in Peru
In my recent blog posts I have been arguing that under a conception of democracy which equates the term exclusively with that of parliamentary representative democracy, change is limited to …
Reflections on the Recent Presidential Elections in Portugal and the Rise of the Far Right.
On Sunday 24th January last, Portugal held presidential elections. This was an event largely ignored by the British press. The Guardian reported the outcome online here. The elections were largely …
Parliamentary politics, the establishment and the plight of the left behind
In Part 2 of my blogposts on Black Lives Matter I raised the issue of the relationship between parliamentary and extra-parliamentary action in contributing to progressive democratic social change. I …
Black Lives Matter and the Contradictions of Representative Democracy- Part 3 Class, Nation and Empire
In Part 1 of this blogpost, I referred to Black Lives Matter (BLM) being a movement that challenges the self-image of nations whose symbols and icons include celebration of their …
Black Lives Matter and the Contradictions of Representative Democracy Part 2- What is democracy?
In the first part of this blog, I said that the BLM movement and Keir Starmer’s reaction to the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston raised important questions for …
Black Lives Matter and the Contradictions of Representative Democracy- Part 1
When the statue honouring slave trader Edward Colston was toppled from its plinth in Bristol by a crowd of young people and thrown into the river, the new Labour leader …
Antisemitism and Populism
The respected Marxist historian and biographer of Stalin and Trotsky Isaac Deutscher gave a lecture on the topic of antisemitism to the World Jewish Congress held in London in September …
Reflection on the results of the 28 April 2019 general elections in Spain
Spain held general elections on April 28 called by the Socialist Party (PSOE) leader Pedro Sánchez. Sánchez had been leading a minority government after the previous prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, …
Reflections on the Gilets Jaunes protests in France
The last issue of the London Review of Books publishes a long article by Jeremy Harding on the gilets jaunes in France entitled Among the Gilets Jaunes. I was very …
Antisemitism, Corbyn and the Labour Party
I have been following with mounting concern the stories in the Guardian over accusations of antisemitism in the Labour Party. They felt to me as an unjustified renewed campaign against …