This year, the good people behind the Edinburgh Festival have kindly invited me to host a series of discussions under the title KILLING DEMOCRACY? My remit was: Further to explore the question of whether the current form of financialised capitalism is devouring democracy, reflecting on my work with the Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25). In a […]
Campaigning
Free Gaza now!
No one can be free if one person is in chains, let alone a whole people. It is in the interests of all, Jews & Arabs, Europeans & Americans, Asians & Africans that the blockade of Gaza and the collective abuse of its people ends now!
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM, NOT SOCIALISM IN ONE COUNTRY: On the UK Left’s relation with Europe – Open Labour document
Socialism is internationalist. As socialists, we ought to be taking down borders between workers; not putting new ones up. Labour deserves, at a minimum, the same rights and freedoms as capital if we are to be masters of the system, not its servants. The political aim of the Left has always been to improve labour, […]
The Italian crisis was the Left’s final warning – New Statesman op-ed, 6 June 2018
The Left must adopt a new, credible EU policy agenda: It’s time to explain how the bloc, and the euro, could be run differently, democratically and sustainably Italy’s recent political crisis has at once confirmed the European Union’s unsustainability and the left’s impotence. That the euro is a currency system within which a country like Italy cannot […]
President Mattarella of Italy: From moral drift to tactical blunder
I concede that there are issues over which I would welcome the Italian President’s use of constitutional powers that (in my humble opinion) he should not have.(*) One such issue is the outrageous policy of the Lega and the promise of its leader, Mr Salvini, to expel five hundred thousand migrants from Italy. Had President Mattarella refused […]
May 1st: As long as capitalism exists, every generation of workers is condemned to wage the same struggles again and again – for dignity, wages, conditions, hours
Today, May 1, we struggle not to forget the sacrifices of generations of workers to etch onto the world’s collective conscience the crucial principle that labour is not, and can never be, just another commodity. We struggle to remember past struggles so that the next struggles can be won in the name of humanism. The 1st of May […]
Addressing Sheffield’s Festival of Ideas: DiEM25 is here to help heal the rift between progressive Remainers and progressive Leavers – audio, 18 APR 2018
Ladies and gentlemen, the main reason for being here tonight is to use, in our capacity as the Democracy in Europe Movement – DiEM25 -, to press whatever resources we have into the service of healing the rift between progressive Remainers and progressive Leavers. We have enough divisions in the UK, we have enough divisions in […]
Our new European party can unite Britain’s feuding Remainers and Leavers – by Yanis Varoufakis, Benoit Hamon (Generation-s), Luigi de Magistris (mayor of Naples), Rasmus Nordqvist (Alternativet); Rui Tavares, former MEP from Portugal (Livre); & Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk (Razem), op-ed in The Guardian
The European Union and the UK are on a cliff edge. Left to its Brussels-based establishment, the EU continues to turn against most of its people who, as a consequence, turn against Brussels. Meanwhile, facing an immensely damaging Brexit, the people of Britain are becoming despondent. This is the moment for British and continental progressives to forge […]
Free Julian now! A MeRA25 video message in support of the petition to restore Assange’s access to the outside world
You can disagree with him, mock him, despise him. But you cannot ignore what he contributed to your understanding of crimes committed in your name against humanity. Or that he is persecuted for this and nothing else. End Assange’s isolation now. Sign the petition!
Why we founded new political party MeRA25 to challenge austerity in Greece – The New Statesman, 5 APR 2018
After successfully quashing Greece’s 2015 debtor’s prison break, Europe’s deep establishment has embarked on a mission to declare the country’s economic and social crisis over. To recall Tacitus, “they make a desert and they call it peace”. Since 2015, the Greek state has paid its creditors a sum equal to the aggregate pre-tax revenues of […]