Future of the Left

🇬🇧🏗️🏭🇬🇧🏗️🏭New FotL issue with intro from @fhpitts on @IsembardGroup and @AFitzgerald1992 🇬🇧🏗️🏭🇬🇧🏗️🏭 Includes: Jonathan Rutherford on the aftermath @emilylawford on young women @Scarlett__Mag on the centre ground @DouthatNYT on Orbán John Gray on the American Empire 🔗⬇️

Also includes @AmeliaERWood on how Australia stopped the boats, @LabourTogether on street votes, and @HarryScoffin on England's broken leasehold system. futureoftheleft.substack.com/p/newsletter-1…

🇬🇧🏗️🏭🇬🇧🏗️🏭New FotL issue with intro from @fhpitts on @IsembardGroup and @AFitzgerald1992 🇬🇧🏗️🏭🇬🇧🏗️🏭 Includes: Jonathan Rutherford on the aftermath @emilylawford on young women @Scarlett__Mag on the centre ground @DouthatNYT on Orbán John Gray on the American Empire 🔗⬇️

@ryan_wain futureoftheleft.substack.com

Read the Observer newspaper front to back so you don’t have to. I fear the left/centre left is repeating the same old mistakes. Articles arguing Brexit will be reversed because public poll against it now, that a stronger EU relationship is needed as special relationship with US is ‘stone-dead’. Smart people write polemics against populist leaders - Trump, Orban - and frankly condescending pieces about their supporters. Everything is fake news and polling. The Democrats will win the midterms as support falls for GOP after a war no one wants. STOP. We are making the same mistakes as we have for two decades now - waiting for the pendulum to swing in our favour as people realise their mistakes. The truth is people are lost because what’s in front of them is broken. The best thing we on the left can do now is stop to understand why, and develop answers to halt and reverse decline. Why rejoin an EU that clearly is powerless? Why rejoice a hallow electoral victory when it’s just another case of people voting against the other guy? Why have a foreign policy so reactive and introspective that it has the by product of rewarding despots and murderous dictators? And where is our plan for an economy that actually delivers higher living standards (hint the answer isn’t redistributing an ever dwindling pie with a mythical wealth tax.) Our politics has fallen so far - it must be about a plan and an agenda for the future. Now, tell me where I can read about that…

Is it too late to reindustrialise?, by Rian Chad Whitton (@RianCFFWhitton) Britain has industrialised before. But the country of Pitt and Lord Liverpool, with its high wages, captive markets and cheap energy, was primed. Modern Britain, with its expensive energy, low equipment stock, and asymmetric openness to others, is certainly not. Reversing decades of insufficient investment and making Britain a major manufacturing power is going to be a mammoth task. Some argue that it is a task not worth pursuing. The staple criticism has come from free-marketers like Daniel Hannan, who argues there is “nothing special about manufacturing”, and that globalisation is good for the consumer and the economy. Prior to becoming an MP, Labour thinktanker Torsten Bell argued that Britain should stay focused on being a world-leader in services. But the productivity statistics are on the side of the reindustrialists. Beyond the most rudimentary wood and textile craftsmanship, manufacturing is more productive per worker than average. Britain’s energy-intensive and resource-extractive industries employed 1% of the workforce, but accounted for nearly 3% of gross value added (GVA), an important metric of economic value. The average worker in heavy industry is 77% more productive than the national average. Read more below ⬇️ buff.ly/XdCHHX3

Tremendous and utterly correct from Tobias Phibbs in @FutureLeft1 - lightness, levity and the deeply human joy should come with us in our engagement with the political. True profundity is found not in solemnity but in a spirit which plays naively with holy and untouchable.

Tobias Phibbs on everything that is wrong with our politics. The Future of the Left newsletter consistently features the most interesting thought on the left, and we recommend subscribing to it.

That intro 🔥

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Tobias Phibbs is a generational talent, and romantic

TOP INTRO from Tobias Phibbs for this week's FotL email. Follow them👇for updates from the non-insane Left. And sign up to the emails on Substack: futureoftheleft.substack.com/p/newsletter-1…

Brutally brilliant intro from Tobias here!

Also includes: @martha_dacombe on competing economic visions, @ChPSandmann on productivity and industrial energy prices, Nick Butler on North Sea oil and gas, @TheEconomist on net zero, and @ADOBrien88 on EU and US. futureoftheleft.substack.com/p/newsletter-1…

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🌹🌱🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🌹🌱 New FotL issue out with intro from Tobias Phibbs 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🌹🌱🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🌹🌱 Includes: @OvePM on shock of Iran conflict @DespoticInroad on anglo-gaullism @jennirsl on asylum system @RianCFFWhitton on machine tools @Jonathan_Hinder on economic nationalism 🔗⬇️

Municipal public ownership built reservoirs. Privatisation didn’t. open.substack.com/pub/energynetw…

"One grows old, one faces the end, but this does not instil a desire to return and start all over again. Rather it spurs a turn back to give a helping hand to the next generation on its way." writes Jonathan Rutherford in a review of Norbert Bobbio's essay 'Old Age'.

"We still have a political class more comfortable speaking in the padded idiom of values than facing facts, attached to a state that has outsourced many of its key functions to stakeholders and special interests." Superb from @OvePM

Winter kept us warm - now we face the harsh light of Spring. Today’s piece for ⁦@thetimes⁩: the reality of Britain’s position and the need for change, ft. Eisenhower, Eden and Eliot. thetimes.com/article/b6cb90…

🚀🇬🇧🚀🇬🇧🚀 New FotL issue with intro from @aeronlaffere 🚀🇬🇧🚀🇬🇧🚀🇬🇧 Includes: John Bew on the 4th great disruption @skulthorp on army recruitment @DowningAm on the predictable energy crisis @b_judah on the Chagos deal @EdConwaySky on new steel tariffs and North Sea oil 🔗⬇️

Also includes @AaronBastani on the demise of a serious liberal project, @LabourTogether on local gov reform, @HelenHet20 on the US/Iran conflict and energy markets, and Jonathan Rutherford on getting old.