Tag Archives: Box0_TOP_ENG

[embedded content] Free market capitalism died over a 100 years ago and gave way to monopoly capitalism. Monopoly capitalism is now not even able to reproduce itself, let alone sustain the planet, common decency etc. But what comes next? Thanks to the good people at PATREON for putting imagery to my words. Support the creation of more videos like this:...

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With Lives, Livelihoods and the Union on the brink, the COVID-19 pandemic is the greatest test of the European project in the history of the Union — and we are failing. Solidarity was meant to be a foundational principle of the EU. But solidarity is missing at the moment it is most needed. COVID-19 has revealed a fundamental truth: Europe is only as healthy as its sickest resident, only as prosperous as its most...

[embedded content] Enormous global corporations and financial institutions are now, some say, more powerful than governments. Rules that once constrained and regulated capitalism have gone. And when their power causes massive destruction, the captains of Big Capital find ways to profit from the destruction. So, is modern capitalism, itself, a threat to capitalism? Or will corporations always...

The Eurogroup met yesterday, Monday 16th March, to hammer out its coordinated fiscal response to the massive recession already in progress following the lockdown of much of Europe’s society. The task they faced is enormous: If sales, tourism, services etc. fall by 50% for just one month (which is certain), and then by 25% for only two more months (i.e. the best-case scenario), then annual growth will be -10%....

Steven Mnuchin’s snide remark about teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg at this year’s World Economic Forum meeting in Davos outraged liberal commentators. US treasury secretary Mnuchin, responding to Thunberg’s call for an immediate exit from fossil fuel investments, said that she should go to college “to study economics” before “she can come back and explain that to us”. Two days earlier, Trump had referred...

Spring is already in the air across Greece. Even in the bleakest of times, nature’s renaissance renders hope irrepressible. But this one is proving a cruel spring for a people caught up in a decade-old crisis yielding one ritual humiliation after another. Costas runs a small bookshop in my central Athens neighbourhood. Although jovial by constitution, he finds it difficult to hide the worry lines multiplying on...

Ursula von der Leyen’s signature proposal co-opts the slogans of climate activism, but has none of the substance Emergencies tend to reveal our true priorities. When our house is burning down or the storm waters are flooding in, we hold on to what we value most, and leave the rest behind. A decade ago, the leaders of the European Union found themselves facing such a moment. With the French and German banks...

On the next phase of Europe’s transnational progressive movement PRAGUE ADDRESS, 22nd November 2019 [embedded content] We come from all over Europe. From across borders, party lines and with different views of the good society. We are united by these differences. Europe will be democratised. Or it will disintegrate. This is not a scare tactic. It is a fact! The EU’s disintegration is happening. New...

[embedded content] Last Friday (8th November 2019), I delivered a Cambridge Union address on (what else?) Brexit. My opening message was: “Instead of moaning about the state of British institutions, rejoice! For all its many ills, Brexit has reinvigorated British democracy.” Unlike most continental European parliaments, the House of Commons remains at the heart of decision making and, to...