Anthony Barnett (London, OK): I threw down a gauntlet earlier this month and asked: where is the thinking on the left? Compared to the energy and vitality of right-wing blogland it seemed to me that the left was failing to make connections and set an agenda, whether far-left, centre-left, liberal-left, it all seemed left-over. I tagged the Fabians and Compass groups by name. Gordon Brown had announced a pathbreaking engagement with the undemocratic nature of the British state as a whole and they were just asleep at the wheel. They could support, oppose, expose, critique or campaign on it, or relate it to other issues too, instead there as no response at all; it was as if their definition of campaigning was to watch Newsnight. A very intense exchange took place in the comment section between Paul Hilder from Avaaz and Tony Curzon Price of oD about the the connections between the individual, equality and solidarity, but from the wider traditional UK left came there...
Now Sunder Katwala, head of the Fabians and fresh from paternity leave, has stormed back. Accusing me of being a Jimmy Porter (ouch!) he lays down a five point strategy for the left. He connects new thinking on equality with the democratic and identity agendas, insists on the need for a market framework to beat climate change, an overall approach that strengthens both individual autonomy and political engagement, and he concludes by insisting on a modest but real internationalism based on solidarity.
We have published it in the oD article section of OurKingdom, you can and should read it HERE (he also talks about the Tories). David Miliband has called for Labour to have another ten years. This is why they might get it, and it is certainly why they think they deserve it.
