Month: December 2016

My new piece for Progress is a review of Can Dündar’s notes from a Turkish prison. Sadly, that’s where you end up as a progressive journalist in Turkey. Not only a great book, but there’s a message for all of us about standing up for independent thought. It’s not a growth industry these days.http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2016/12/14/we-are-arrested/

It was always going to be important to wait until the dust settled around Labour’s second leadership election to see what was going to happen next. Now, settled it has and things are a little clearer, but only a little. What remains still looks like a panorama tremendously unhelpful to Labour moderates. First, we might… Continue reading Different degrees of losing

In these topsy-turvy days of 2016, in the wake of Brexit and Trump, it is easy to believe that anything is possible. And not in a positive way.One: it is quite possible that we will wake up tomorrow to find that a European state has a fascist for a head of state: Norbert Hofer could… Continue reading Two Central European vignettes: fascism and totalitarianism