London academic Lord Glasman is one of those leading Labour’s latest attempt at re-invention. He’s calling it ‘Blue Labour’, an appeal to small-c conservatives and to all who grasp the point about democratic collective action, to defend the places and traditions we cherish, to resist the rapacious appetites of global market forces. It sounds likeContinueContinue reading “Borrowed Labour”
Category Archives: Political Philosophy
Localism, R.I.P.
We have long been critical of the Coalition’s localism agenda. Not because we disagree with it in principle. Far from it. We would devolve power further and faster, and instead of dismantling those anti-democratic regional institutions we would democratise them in the form of a Wessex Parliament – the ‘Witan’ – an accountable voice forContinueContinue reading “Localism, R.I.P.”
Remaking Politics
“I do not believe in struggling to take power, but to build it.”Hugo BlancoGrowth is what everyone wants. Apparently. So we can pay the banks the interest on the money they created out of nothing.We could join in too and become a pro-growth party. Just like the other ‘choices’ on offer. All hurtling towards theContinueContinue reading “Remaking Politics”
Non Homo Insula Est
No man is an island. The famous words of John Donne, Dean of St Paul’s in London. Written in English, translated here into Latin.Why Latin? A cloud of celebrities ranging from Joanna Lumley, a native of Kashmir, to Boris Johnson, former MP for Henley-on Thames, has recently been gathered in support of the proposition thatContinueContinue reading “Non Homo Insula Est”
No State To Be In?
Lord Deben – the former Tory MP John Selwyn Gummer – wrote approvingly this week of the Coalition’s decentralist agenda: “People who feel that they cannot influence big decisions in a globalised world are adamant that they should control the space around them. It doesn’t help to call it nimby. It is more ‘ideah’ –ContinueContinue reading “No State To Be In?”
Cornwall Points the Way
Among all the commentary from the London media about the results from the 4 June elections, it is possible that a few facts about Cornwall may have escaped widespread notice.In the Euro election, Mebyon Kernow – the Party for Cornwall took 7% of the vote across the Cornwall counting area. In many parts of midContinueContinue reading “Cornwall Points the Way”
Note from Abruzzo
Guest contribution by Colin Bex, Wessex Regionalists’ London BureauStaying near a village in Casoli, some eighty miles south-west of L’Aquila, I awoke at 3.30am on Monday 6 April, but was unaware of any particular reason other than as part of an irritating cycle of broken sleep to which have become accustomed for some time now.NeighboursContinueContinue reading “Note from Abruzzo”
Whither Wessex?
“At a number of places in his celebrated Imperialism (1902), J. A. Hobson used southern England as an image of the successful, imperialist side of British capitalism: a countryside of plush ‘parasitism’ drawing tribute from overseas via the City, supporting ‘great tame masses of retainers’ in service and secondary industries, and riddled with ex-imperialist hirelings.ContinueContinue reading “Whither Wessex?”
Wessex Regionalists 