Austerity is rarely popular during election season, and already this campaign has featured a variety of budget-straining proposals. Donald Trump has called for exempting tips from taxation, which Kamala Harris subsequently endorsed. J.D. Vance has suggested increasing the child tax …
The next President will be beholden to regional elites
It has become conventional wisdom in the waning days of Biden’s presidency to say that America has launched a new era in economics. Concepts like industrial policy, trade protectionism, antitrust enforcement and child subsidies — all once verboten during the …
Why does the Right worship Javier Milei?
Javier Milei, Argentina’s self-styled “anarcho-capitalist” president, enjoys an almost Christ-like status among heterodox conservatives and MAGA-style Right-wingers, almost on a par with Trump himself. Like lovestruck teenagers, a certain type of conservative drools over Milei’s over-the-top mannerisms and “based” speeches …
Liberalism’s sin was born in the Cold War
If the contemporary political scene is strewn with wreckage, it is clearer than ever that “neoconservatism” and “neoliberalism” did much of the damage. More than any other, these two ideologies have afflicted both the centre-right and centre-left, fostering the sense …
The capitalists are circling over Ukraine
Two weeks ago, thousands of representatives from businesses and governments from across the world gathered in London to “support Ukraine’s recovery”. But was the gathering of all those Western corporate elites at the Ukraine Recovery Conference entirely altruistic? There are, …
The betrayal of white working-class men
Cards on the table: I’m a rampant opponent of white, bourgeois, male privilege. Events such as the Coronation, or another Biden-Trump stand-off, pull this lunacy into sharp focus. Yes, these ludicrous and deranged media-driven circuses may have little to do …
Renewable energy’s progressive halo
When discussing what is needed to solve climate change, there is a knee-jerk response: renewable energy. As a result, forecasts showing renewables poised to surpass coal as the largest source of electricity by 2025 are assumed to be a positive …
Neoliberalism killed the liberal dream
The 150th anniversary of J.S Mill’s death seems a prime opportunity to reflect on the tangled mess that liberalism has bequeathed to the 21st century. Fairweather liberals can’t decide whether to torch their dusty copies of On Liberty or dust …
Capitalist radicals will shatter the world
“We are back to the enigmatic pulse-beat of the messianic,” wrote the literary critic George Steiner a few months after the fall of the Berlin Wall. “No economist-pundit, no geopolitical strategist, no ‘Kremlinologist’ or socio-economic analyst foresaw what we are …
Why society still needs the family
In 1883, on his deathbed, Karl Marx revealed a terrible secret to his daughter, Eleanor. It was a truth he had kept hidden for decades: in 1851, while his own wife was pregnant, Marx fathered an illegitimate son with the …
Why society still needs the family
In 1883, on his deathbed, Karl Marx revealed a terrible secret to his daughter, Eleanor. It was a truth he had kept hidden for decades: in 1851, while his own wife was pregnant, Marx fathered an illegitimate son with the …
Why society still needs the family
In 1883, on his deathbed, Karl Marx revealed a terrible secret to his daughter, Eleanor. It was a truth he had kept hidden for decades: in 1851, while his own wife was pregnant, Marx fathered an illegitimate son with the …
Why society still needs the family
In 1883, on his deathbed, Karl Marx revealed a terrible secret to his daughter, Eleanor. It was a truth he had kept hidden for decades: in 1851, while his own wife was pregnant, Marx fathered an illegitimate son with the …
Why society still needs the family
In 1883, on his deathbed, Karl Marx revealed a terrible secret to his daughter, Eleanor. It was a truth he had kept hidden for decades: in 1851, while his own wife was pregnant, Marx fathered an illegitimate son with the …
The twilight of the Disney princess
On Sunday, as hundreds of thousands queued to see the mortal remains of our Queen lying in state, I stood in a shorter queue, to see a different queen in the flesh. The occasion was my daughter’s long-planned birthday excursion …