A Free Left Blog

Here I have pasted in a lengthy series of questions  and answers  I conducted with  the journalist Sylvie Perez for an article t hat has appeared in the March issue of the French magazine L'Incorrect .  The article discusses the transgender-feminist war that is raging away now in Britain. My comments put this in the context of what I call 'the system of diversity' in my book The Tribe . Obviously, only a few of those comments can appear in the article and I thought they were worth pasting in full on here. Questions and Answers 1/ What does the conflict opposing feminists to transgender activists tell us about the escalation in the victimhood status and overall about the leap forwards of identity politics ? Victimhood is the base of knowledge which all claims to identity group favouritism rely on. The transgender activists seem to have realised this, learning their lessons from other identity activists that maximising how victimised they appear ...

I have written a piece for the website Unherd about the way the alliance between  technocratic, free market liberalism and the politics of diversity over mass immigration - is a theme that crops up a few times in my book. You can read the article  here .

On one level Virgin Trains’ decision to stop selling the Daily Mail is quite a trivial matter. The company is a private business and can decide not to sell whatever it likes. But there is also a serious aspect to this, for it shows how some of our major public-facing organisations (including businesses like Virgin and the retailer Paperchase ) are explicitly taking the ‘progressive’, liberal-left side in our Culture Wars, and using what control they have over public space to stop the views of opponents from appearing. According to the story in PR Week , Virgin Trains announced its decision in a memo to staff last year, saying, “There’s been considerable concern raised by colleagues about the Mail’s editorial position on issues such as immigration, LGBT rights, and unemployment. We’ve decided that this paper is not compatible with the VT brand and our beliefs. We won’t be stocking the Daily Mail for sale or as a giveaway.” As we can see, the statement is explicitly poli...

I was a Leave voter, and I won. However, since that heady early morning of 24 rd June when David Dimbleby announced that Britain was leaving the European Union, reality has dawned. The £ has fallen sharply; bankers and business groups have despaired and threatened to leave the country; there has been a massive jump in ‘hate crime’; the world and especially our former European partners are horrified at us for having chosen isolation and xenophobia over openness and tolerance. Now we are stuck here with all this uncertainty, not knowing what that ugly word ‘Brexit’ means, while our government is clearly clueless and doesn’t know what it’s doing. It’s a new dawn, a new day – and the new reality we’re living in certainly isn’t comfortable or pleasant. That’s the story anyway. Some of it is true. The new reality does come with discomforts and difficulties, and the fractious nature of our politics on the subject of Brexit is pretty unpleasant. But the idea constantly pres...

I left the Labour Party this morning. I won’t go on for ages about why because I don’t want this blog to be about me, but I will say a few words. Firstly, people who have read some of my witterings on here will be aware that I’ve always been critical of the Labour Party, quite stridently in some cases. I think Labour has deep institutional and cultural problems, albeit I think these are really issues of the liberal-left ‘tribe’ and the systems of identity group favouritism it has spread into much of our public life rather than just about Labour. Labour simply provides a focus and a centre for them. My 2015 leadership election ballot paper Nevertheless, in looking at all this as I’ve done here, and on LabourList while I was allowed to write there, I’ve seen myself as a critical friend – as someone who is basically on the same side and wants us to change and become more responsive to all the people rather than just minister to certain groups and our own – mostly middle-clas...

Speech at the London School of Economics Forum for Philosophy debate , 27th April 2016. I was proposing the motion alongside Dr Gerard Lyons  (economic adviser to the Mayor of London), with journalist Hugo Dixon and Professor of Political Theory Katrin Flikschuh on the other side arguing against. Each panellist had seven minutes to speak, followed by questions from the other side and then questions from the audience. Dr Gerard Lyons making his case for leaving the EU. [This is an amalgam of what I had planned to say in my speech and what I did say – so I missed out some of this in actual delivery while adding some ‘umms’ and ‘errs’ and various other stuff] The whole debate is now available to listen via a podcast here . Hello everyone. I want to start off by emphasising that I’m actually a pro-European. I always have been. I even like an idea of the EU (as  an idea, albeit not the idea). But on the balance I think we should leave the EU. I’m proba...

The recent deaths of hundreds of migrants on boats in the Mediterranean are first of all a tragedy for the people involved and their families – also of course the poor survivors plus the Italians and others who are retrieving the bodies. But the phenomenon is much wider than this, and many are describing it as a disgrace in relation to British policy. Labour’s shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper for example called Home Secretary Theresa May "immoral" for having participated in dropping EU search and rescue operations; plenty of others have piled in behind her. Our demands that something must be done morphs very quickly into that we must do something – specifically that we must provide upgraded rescue services for all these migrants who are paying big money to traffickers to get to Europe. It is the classic humanitarian response and is perhaps the only practical way to prevent a lot more of these disasters from happening. It has had me wondering however i...

This post was first published on 2 nd April on The Condition of the Left in England blog which is written by Samuel Fawcett, Deputy Editor of the Young Fabians’ ‘Anticipations’ publication . ‘Soothsaying is not really my thing normally – which is why it’s rather nice to have a go at it. But, as for who is going to win the election and by how much, I can only repeat a version of the general consensus from the geeks who study the daily polls. They say we will either have a Labour minority government or a Conservative minority government, or another coalition – Labour-Lib Dems, Conservative-Lib Dems or Conservative-DUP. I see no reason to doubt this. Nevertheless, there are a few things that are perhaps worth saying which have not been covered extensively already. 1. The next Parliament will be one of rancour and increasing anti-politics mood. Narrow majorities, coalitions and minority governments generally make for feverish politics. That the Conservative-Lib Dem...