Progressive Politics |
Left Unity
Progressive politics is facing a crisis several decades in the making. The ‘crisis of social democracy’ after the 1980s neoliberal revolution has been followed by the demise of the liberal ‘end of history’ since the wars and financial crises of the 2000s. Rapid increases in the size, complexity, and fluidity of modern societies have disrupted old communities and identities, and brought new ones into being to challenge them. Cultural tensions have risen alongside older economic and political divisions to the forefront of ideological contests.
The result has been polarisation: the resurgence of the far right, and a fragmentation of the left towards the centre and the extremes. To confront this crisis, the progressive left must reevaluate its approach to ideological and strategic competition. It must overcome its divisions and bring about ‘left unity’—between socialists and liberals, greens and anarchists, republicans, regionalists, anti-racists, feminists, and pro-LGBTQ* activists. This project, commissioned as part of Policy Network’s ‘Progressive Futures’ programme, outlines visions and strategies for how the contemporary left can combine its forces and build a ‘progressive alliance’ before it is too late.
Selected publications:
The result has been polarisation: the resurgence of the far right, and a fragmentation of the left towards the centre and the extremes. To confront this crisis, the progressive left must reevaluate its approach to ideological and strategic competition. It must overcome its divisions and bring about ‘left unity’—between socialists and liberals, greens and anarchists, republicans, regionalists, anti-racists, feminists, and pro-LGBTQ* activists. This project, commissioned as part of Policy Network’s ‘Progressive Futures’ programme, outlines visions and strategies for how the contemporary left can combine its forces and build a ‘progressive alliance’ before it is too late.
Selected publications:
- ‘Left Unity: An Interview with Marius Ostrowski’, Justice Everywhere, 23 April 2020.
- ‘What are the values of the left?’, Justice Everywhere, 5 March 2020.
- ‘Cooperation is not a dirty word’, Compass, 24 February 2020.
- Left Unity: Manifesto for a Progressive Alliance (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020)
- ‘How the German left is looking to Jeremy Corbyn for inspiration’, New Statesman, 11 February 2019.