Product Description: In Crosland’s Legacy, noted political writer Patrick Diamond explores the contemporary impact of Anthony Crosland’s writings on the British Labour Party, in particular through his work The Future of Socialism, published nearly sixty years ago...read more

Product Description: Number Ten Downing Street and the Cabinet Office are at the apex of power in British government, but relatively little is known about the day to day functioning of these great institutions of state. With an unprecedented level of access, and wide-ranging interviews from former ministers, senior civil servants and political advisers, Patrick Diamond examines the administrative and political machinery serving the Prime Minister, and considers how it evolved from the early years of New Labour to the election of the Coalition Government in 2010...read more

Those who hoped the collapse of financial markets would usher in the end of neoliberalism and rehabilitate support for traditional social democratic policies programmes have been disappointed. It is not only the irrationality of markets which is the focus of public discontent, but the inefficiency of states and the inability of elected governments to humanise and control global market capitalism. Despite recent successes, social democratic parties in the EU have become locked in a cycle of electoral under-performance. The crisis remedies of the Right appear more simple and direct in their diagnosis, casting the state as restrictive, wasteful and inefficient. Abstract theoretical debates on the Left about a 'paradigm shift' in Western capitalism in the aftermath of the crisis have had little traction.So, in the aftermath of the 2008 crash prompted by the failure of US financial services conglomerate, Lehman Brothers, this book addresses a deceptively simple question: what is to be done? It makes the case for a new, post-crisis settlement harnessing the dynamic traditions of social liberalism and social democracy as the foundation for progressive reforms geared towards alleviating crisis aftershocks and addressing the deep-seated structural challenges afflicting western capitalist democracies.

Product Description: The social democratic parties were once the strongest political forces in Europe. Today, however, they appear disoriented and rudderless, crucially lacking the ideological, intellectual, and organizational vitality which underpinned their strength in the post-war political landscape...read more

This book makes an essential contribution to the debate now opening up over the future of Europe in the wake of the demise of the Constitution. Since 1989 much about the European Union has changed, including the very definition of 'Europe' itself. The EU has enlarged to 25 countries and the division between Western and Eastern Europe has disappeared. The EU has responded positively to these changes, not only by making a success of enlargement, but by pushing ahead with the Single Market and the Single Currency. These very successes, however, have led to a reaction. Those who voted 'no' in the referenda in France and the Netherlands registered worries about Europe's future, especially on a social and economic level. For many, 'social Europe' - the welfare states that offer protection from the buffetings of the global marketplace - are under threat. Unemployment and low growth are seemingly becoming endemic across much of the EU. How should pro-Europeans respond? What future is there for Europe's cherished social model? How will the EU deal with the competitive pressures coming from India, China and other industrialising countries? In this volume, leading contributors from a range of countries offer answers to these questions.

Product Description: This book tackles one of the most pressing issues currently facing centre-left governments: social inequality. At a time when the traditional mechanisms of social cohesion have been undermined by greater individualism, the globalization of production, and the fragmentation of social life, the challenges posed by inequality are more pronounced than ever before...read more

New Labour was not conjured up out of thin air - it only looks like that because of the party's amnesia concerning its intellectual development. This book provides extracts from fifteen thinkers located within the revisionist tradition as an antidote to that amnesia.