Alan Simpson
The images of motorway tailbacks, even before Britain’s lockdown period officially loosened, brought two things home to me. The first was that, without clear leadership, crises always take you perilously close to...
Green New Deal – time for an ecological reboot?
Labour’s Green New Deal faces a torrid credibility test. The world, post-Covid, will be nothing like the one preceding it. There will be no ‘V’ shaped economic recovery. Britain will struggle to avoid further economic...
The Great Unravelling: Part 4
The Portal: another world is possible “A sense of cosmic specialness is no guarantee of good stewardship.” David Wallace-Wells “Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their...
After the Apocalypse
“Everything we do during and after this crisis must be with a strong focus on building more equal, inclusive and sustainable economies and societies that are more resilient in the face of pandemics, climate...
The Great Unravelling: Part 3
Escaping today, rethinking tomorrow Welcome to ghost-town Britain, a land none of us were prepared for. Barely 3 months ago, you’d have ridiculed anyone suggesting we’d be tuning in to the daily death count...
The Great Unravelling: Part 2
Coronavirus: A Very British Cull The nation is at war. Peacetime production has slumped, foreign travel collapsed, casualties rise. In every part of the country, people anxiously worry about how to avoid the enemy. This...
The Great Unravelling – a system in meltdown
It didn't have to be coronavirus. It didn't have to be Storm Ciara (or Dennis, or Jorge). The delusions of neoliberalism stand at the edge of an implosion just waiting to happen. But, as with the Emperor's New Clothes...
Après le déluge
Where does Labour go now? Parliament starts the new decade with Labour still in a state of grief…and anger…about its crushing election defeat. It’s a good place to start. If we’re brutally...
The Sustainable Lives of Others
International lessons in decentralising Britain’s energy system Britain has to cut its carbon emissions in half within the coming decade to meet the IPCC and Paris climate targets. Decentralised energy will be a...
While Rome (or California) burns
At a time riven by contradictions and confusion, it is important to celebrate what’s worth celebrating. Labour’s pre-manifesto pledges – to build only zero-carbon homes from 2022, and to make 27...
It’s where you place the blame
Politics beyond Brexit Brexit is a constitutional crisis. Climate is an existential one. It’s important to get that clear before diving into my childhood affection for Peanuts cartoons. One of my all time...
Ecology and Equity – The Economics of Sustainable Inclusion
As Labour prepares for the next General Election it will come under diverging pressures on how to address both the glaring wealth inequalities and the risk of climate breakdown. Some of the avenues that look like...
A Plague on all our Houses
Buyers beware: this may become more of a rant than a reflection. Last Wednesday’s Prime Ministers Questions may be more of a turning point than people think. It was a day when people queued up to kick buckets out...
Two flew over the cuckoo’s nest
The nation may be mesmerised by the last stages of the Tory Leadership race, but the whole spectacle comes much closer to insanity than vanity.
Politics in crisis – a different economics
At the end of 2016 there were 345,000 electric buses in operation worldwide. China had 343,500 of them. By September 2018, the USA had over 1 million plug-in cars.
Politics in Crisis – avoiding the Dog’s Brexit
It can’t come as a surprise that Labour has been thrown into a spin after the bruising it took in the Euro elections. The campaign was a disaster, the message unconvincing and the politics deeply confusing.
Climate Jesus versus the Pharisees
As political Parties dust themselves down after the drubbing of local government elections, the good news is that all the answers are to be found in bigger, rather than smaller, issues. Climate, not Brexit, is the key.
