Category Archives: Writing

The idea of a Green New Deal has captured imaginations across the world. For many, it provides an overall narrative neatly stressing the urgency of the major crises of our time. What’s more, in seeking to combat injustice while stemming environmental breakdown, it recognises the interrelation between these problems.  It has been astonishing and energisingContinue reading “A Green New Deal could signal a fundamental shift away from neoliberalism”

What will we think of our reaction to this heatwave in a decade? The narrative over the last few days has been predictably positive. As temperatures rose above 20C, we wore t-shirts outside and ate ice cream at lunch. The Daily Mail posted its customary pictorial of scantily clad women in London parks. The unseasonal weatherContinue reading “Climate breakdown enters its ice cream in February stage”

In 1962, American playwright James Baldwin wrote that “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” Today, his words should give us succour. We need more than ever to face the reality of environmental change. I’m a researcher at IPPR, a think tank. We have beenContinue reading “It’s no longer climate change we’re living through. It’s environmental breakdown”

Eight years of austerity have left our public services and social safety net in tatters. This state of affairs is a political choice. It’s a choice predicated on the principles of a small state and self-reliance, with a  narrow definition of work held up as the ideal economic and social role of all citizens, andContinue reading “The social contract in the 21st century”

Headlines like “We have only twelve years to save the world” appeared across the globe in early October, in the wake of a new report from the United Nations underlining the scale of the challenge posed by climate change. This wasn’t fake news. The world has already warmed by around 1°C since large-scale industrialisation began,Continue reading “One Earth, the impacts of climate change”

What links Donald Trump, Sajid Javid and Jeremy Corbyn? Answer: over the last couple of months, they’ve all sought to capture the political energy from the seemingly endless sequence of tech giant scandals. Trump has tweeted about a supposed (unfounded) anti-right-wing bias in Google searches. In the UK, Javid has warned of tech firms’ record on child safety,Continue reading “A world of digital plenty is possible, but only if we take on the data barons”

Today is Earth Overshoot Day, the date when we have taken more from nature than it can renew in an entire year. Unsustainable extraction is occurring on a planetary scale: we are using natural resources 1.7 times faster in 2018 than the Earth’s ecosystems can regenerate this year. Critically, this year is the earliest dateContinue reading “Today we’ve consumed more resources than the planet can renew in a year”

Facebook is being fined £500,000 by the Information Commissioner, the maximum amount possible, for its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The fine is unlikely to change Facebook’s behaviour. The company is worth an estimated $540 billion, and in the first quarter of 2018 took £500,000 in revenue every five and a half minutes. SomeContinue reading “Fining Facebook isn’t enough – we need total media reform”

Facebook is being fined £500,000 by the Information Commissioner, the maximum amount possible, for its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The fine is unlikely to change Facebook’s behaviour. The company is worth an estimated $540 billion, and in the first quarter of 2018 took £500,000 in revenue every five and a half minutes. Some claim theContinue reading “Fines are fine, but only structural reform can rein in the platform monopolies”

Since the second world war and end of empire, British foreign policy has been moored to two powerful partners. Our ‘special relationship’ with the US has dominated our defence policy, through the cold war into an era of liberal interventionism. Our relationship with Europe, most recently through the European Union, has provided the basis forContinue reading “Britain Unmoored: In Search of a Progressive Foreign Policy”