Britain heads further down the Brexit rabbit-hole
Despite petrol shortages and empty shelves, Labour is adrift—and Johnson may press the Northern Ireland protocol nuclear button.
The soft underbelly of British politics
A by-election in northern England highlights the corrosive atrophying of the UK body politic, Paul Mason writes.
Democracy, activism and the rule of law—key weapons against fascism
Fascism is not just sepia images of yesteryear but a contemporary threat. A liberal-left alliance is needed to counter it.
Hard Labour
Labour’s electoral debacle, Paul Mason writes, epitomises European social democracy’s coalition-building challenge. It just doesn’t see it that way.
Lost an empire, not found a role
Paul Mason finds in the UK’s foreign and defence review a wilful refusal of its natural European engagement.
Unsplendid isolation: Britain after ‘Brexit’
Paul Mason writes that a Biden US presidency allied to an EU pursuing ‘strategic autonomy’ leaves a ‘sovereign’ UK with a bit-part role.
Barrelling towards the ‘Brexit’ cliff edge
The most frightening thing is not the UK government’s end-game strategy, Paul Mason writes. It’s that there isn’t one.
Golden Dawn verdict—no sunset for the far right
Paul Mason argues that with authoritarian conservatives in the White House and the Kremlin it’s no surprise the far right is thriving in Europe.
Technological sovereignty—and a sepia-image Britain
Paul Mason bemoans how ‘Brexit’ has left the UK a beached whale in a world in need of technological regulation driven by European values.
Brexit: deaths, more deaths … and no-deal calculations
In a nightmare-scenario ‘Brexit’ denouement, the UK government provokes no-deal chaos from which it hopes to profit after its Covid-19 shambles.
How his ‘Brexit’ project explains Johnson’s dithering on Covid-19
Paul Mason explains how Boris Johnson’s idiosyncratic initial response to the coronavirus stemmed from his particularistic empire nostalgia.
With the UK’s European door closed, it’s open season for xenophobia
Paul Mason explains how, even after the UK has technically left the EU, ‘Brexit’ has escalated into a culture war over immigration.
Leaving Europe
Paul Mason turns in his Social Europe column from postcapitalism to the theme of post-Brexit Britain.
The Manchester revolution
Paul Mason reimagines the Manchester of his birth in a postcapitalist age—and raises the challenge of getting there.
Could a progressive phoenix arise from the ashes of the UK’s political meltdown?
The solidly bourgeois Financial Times fears Labour could come to power with a potentially postcapitalist programme, Paul Mason writes.
Time for postcapitalism
Paul Mason continues his sketch of a postcapitalist world by drawing out its implications for something in increasingly short supply—time.
To the postcapitalist city … via Amsterdam circa 1619
What makes the 21st century city the harbinger of a postcapitalist world is that for the first time in modern history the network can transcend the market.
The new spirit of postcapitalism
Capitalism emerged in the interstices of feudalism and Paul Mason finds a prefiguring of postcapitalism in the lifeworld of the contemporary European city. Raval, Barcelona, March 2019. The streets are full of young people (and not just students)—sitting, sipping drinks, gazing more at laptops than into each other’s eyes, talking quietly about politics, making art, […]
The unbearable unrealism of the present
Paul Mason begins a series of columns for Social Europe on the theme of postcapitalism and society, stressing the urgency of a new economic model. What characterises the present moment in history is a pervasive sense of unrealism among elites. Official discourses are no longer used as guides to action, laws are not applied and […]
Reject Kaczyński’s Attack On The Rule Of Law In Poland
I want to start with some advice from George Orwell. In 1940, during the Dunkirk crisis, as the British elite made one blunder after another, Orwell wrote in his diary that, for about 10 years, left wing intellectuals had been able to predict events better than the Cabinet. Orwell said: it was not about any power to […]
Commission White Paper Option Six: A Europe of Democracy And Social Justice
The White Paper by Jean-Claude Juncker on 1 March 2017 is a poor answer to the crisis of the European Union. In response, I am proposing that parties and movements committed to internationalism and social justice offer the following alternative to the five options Juncker outlines. I am throwing it out as a draft for discussion among […]
