What is fascism?
The word “fascism” is often used – and mis-used – to describe politicians and policies which are perceived to be somehow aligned with totalitarian ideas. But while it is often apparent right-wing policies that are described as fascist, in fact, fascism shares its ideological roots with progressive politics.
Indeed, to understand fascism, we [...]
Is austerity killing the poor?
Austerity has a bad reputation. The (thoroughly unsuccessful)
attempts to balance the books in western democracies – who for decades have
been spending more than they [...]
Don’t believe the left’s structural explanations of inequality
Inequalities, the left is keen to tell us, are entrenched. When more blacks are stop-searched by police it is used as proof of institutionalised racism. If women are paid [...]
The delusions of Modern Monetary Theory
Modern Monetary Theory (“MMT”) is the new cool kid on the economic
ideas block. Well, it’s not quite new: MMT traces its root back to the early 20th
century and it was [...]
Is the government always wrong?
For libertarians, the state is the enemy. We are opposed to
government from a philosophical as well as a utilitarian angle, believing that
voluntary interactions between free [...]
Don’t listen to the left: Let’s celebrate the belief in meritocracy
Where is the revolution? That’s the question the Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee asks in her column entitled ‘How the right tricked people into supporting rampant [...]
High corporate pay is a matter for shareholder, not think tanks
Friday the 4th of January was "Fat Cat Friday". According to the High Pay Centre, only three days into the new year the average FTSE 100 chief executive would have already [...]
No, it wasn’t the unions that gave you the weekend
A persistent myth on the left is that it was the unions that were responsible for workers being given the weekend off. After all, if it wasn’t for the class struggle of [...]
The Danish song is still ‘a young blond girl’
‘The Danish song is a young blond girl’, wrote the Danish poet Kai Hoffman in 1924, and two years later his famous compatriot, the composer Carl Nielsen, composed a piece [...]
Rain dance
In December, Katowice in Poland played host to the UN’s latest
gathering to discuss climate change, the 24th such summit, and it
again ended with talk of dire scenarios if [...]
Who’s to blame for high ticket prices?
Another January, another rail fare increase. After a year of disruption,
including the chaos around the introduction of the new time tables, disgruntled
commuters are looking [...]