We need to think differently about the class divisions in today’s society, says Kitty Ussher Sometimes it feels very un-British to talk about class. But, without it, we struggle to get a handle on the tensions in British society today, let alone what can be done about them. The importance of class considerations in the foundation …

Labour can no longer let its intellectual conservatism hold it back, writes David Butler Labour finds itself within a gilded cage of intellectual conservatism. The party must understand and offer solutions to a range of complex issues: the productivity puzzle and secular stagnation which threaten to curtail future growth prospects; the problems of an aging society …

Labour revisionism takes on both leftwing orthodoxy and the destructive potential of capitalism, writes Gregg McClymont Each generation must overturn the conventional wisdoms of the last. In social democracy this process for more than a century has been called revisionism. Its author, the German Social Democrat politician Eduard Bernstein, observed the failure of Marxism theory …

Congratulations on your appointment as foreign secretary. You join Ernest Bevin, Herbert Morrison, James Callaghan, Tony Crosland, Robin Cook, Jack Straw and David Miliband in the pantheon. As you mount the Grand Staircase, and stroll around the Locarno Suite and Durbar Court, you will find it hard not to be in awe of your new …

Ed Miliband’s announcement on the referendum question has in equal parts been been overanalysed and misinterpreted. Strategically he has no interest in, and no intention of, holding an in-out vote on the European Union. Why on earth should he? This issue splits the Tories, not Labour. It is totally in his interest to leave the …

Jon Cruddas establishes a frame for reform of power as a choice between Tony Crosland and Michael Young. Crosland espoused the old centralism with a bit of local agency delivery and consultation. Young called instead for a radical devolution of economic and political power. Crosland won and Labour remains wedded to the Croslandite political economy. …

Why Labour needs a new political economy —There is no doubt in my mind that the recent Labour government suffered from not having a credible, alternative political economy to neoliberalism; that is, it had no alternative view of what role the state should play in the economy. The third way was not a piece of …

Born at the start of the 1980s, I am, supposedly, one of Thatcher’s children. Isn’t that an incredible statement? Twenty-three years after Margaret Thatcher was booted out of power, her name defines a generation of people now in their early twenties and thirties. Had I been born a year or so earlier, I wouldn’t have …

Congratulations if you, like me, have just completed a Dry January. My feeling of smugness at having not touched a drop of alcohol since new year’s eve is diluted somewhat by the fact that I am a moderate drinker, and can go a week or two sans booze without noticing. For many more people, a …

When I decided to identify as a Neo-Gaitskellite on Twitter I had two purposes in mind. The first was to wind up my friend Kevin Feeney, who thought the phrase was insufficiently catchy. The second, and the original reason for its conception, was to find a term for moderate Labour which situated today’s Blairites firmly …