A Free Left Blog

Liberals and liberalism are being given a hard time in the wake of Donald Trump's victory and Britain's Leave vote in the EU referendum. But is it really liberalism and the liberal outlook which is at stake here and which really stands accused? I am not so sure. Largely, this is about the way words, terms and labels mean different things to different people and get mixed up in interpretation. On the most basic level, the term 'liberal' means something very different in common American parlance from what it does in the classical British or European sense - complicated by how the American version has worked its way into our consciousness and practice on this side of the pond. In America, being 'liberal' is largely interchangeable with being 'progressive', which is an historical term that aligns us with a version of historical progress, so that our politics are part of a general progression of life from not-so-good to a lot better. That seems fine and g...

Last week Tony Blair delivered a high profile speech at Bloomberg in London on the Middle East in which he placed Islamist ideologues in a ‘Titanic’ struggle with those who want to embrace ‘the modern world’ of pluralistic societies and open economies. As with most of Blair’s speeches that I can remember, it was impressive, cogent and well-delivered. But for me it also exposed a kind of utopianism about that modern world he talked about, and a false dichotomy. As he put it,  “ Underneath the turmoil and revolution of the past years is one very clear and unambiguous struggle: between those with a modern view of the Middle East, one of pluralistic societies and open economies, where the attitudes and patterns of globalisation are embraced; and, on the other side, those who want to impose an ideology born out of a belief that there is one proper religion and one proper view of it, and that this view should, exclusively, determine the nature of society and the political ...

This article was originally published by LabourList on 20th August 2011. “The buyin’ power of the proletariat’s gone down/ Money’s gettin’ shallow and weak/ The place I love best is a sweet memory/ It’s a new path that we trod/ They say low wages are a reality/ If we want to compete abroad.” These words, from the Bob Dylan song Workingman’s Blues off his Modern Times album of 2006, pretty much encapsulate where all peoples stand now as our governments compete to bring jobs and prosperity to our various nations. They also tap into the dilemmas, debates and despair of the Left. Our passions and desires for a better world seem almost beaten into submission by these very old but now turbocharged processes in which mobile capital dictates how the world is changed and people must either play along or find themselves outsiders: liberated but alienated. To their credit, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and other New Labour figures saw these dynamics, developed a narrative to ad...