Thanks to David Grant and Celso Rocha for their interesting comments. Here are some quick replies to the points that they raise. 1. David Grant suggests that I take free trade and the globalized markets that it is generating to be inevitable processes. This is not the case. They are the result of economic policy […]
This is, I think, the third piece written on the renewal of social democracy that Shalom Lappin has written. I have to say I’m no further forward in understanding what this advocacy of free-trade, trade unions and ‘preserving the integrity of the public sphere’ would amount to in practice and I’m not sure that this […]
I am a retired civil servant who endured the dogmatic approach of the Thatcher Government to the privatisation of the public services, and who has observed at first hand the consequences of the failing of the Labour Government to understand the reasons for its failure.
James Purnell caricatures choice sceptics as being traditionalists who are fundamentally opposed to choice in the context of public services. In reality, hardly anyone holds such an extreme position.
If global trade unions were to be organized, they would face two main obstacles.
Choice and competition can help create self-reforming public services and secure traditional social democratic values.
Global trade unions and social trade agreements are the foundations of a 21st century global social democracy.
As part of the conversation we have started, we have created a new category of post on the Website: “Social Democratic Futures” will be vehicle for new Left thinking. The first two, very different, “carriages” of this train of thought are conducted by Shalom Lappin, a co-author of the manifesto and by James Purnell, Minister of State […]