Events

Left Unity: Manifesto for a progressive alliance

To launch this new book by Marius Ostrowski, join Policy Network and Compass for a debate on the opportunities and challenges posed to the left by the new British political landscape

Event Details
Date
19/05/2020
Time
6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
Location

Online webinar

Progressive politics is in crisis. Tainted by its accommodation to the neoliberal revolution, the progressive left is struggling to respond as the temporary consensus around liberal democracy and free-market capitalism starts to fray. As the right turns increasingly towards national-populism, bigotry, and authoritarianism, the left is cripplingly fragmented between the green and liberal centre, and the socialist and post-communist extremes. The lessons of history teach us the sheer costs of left disunity in the face of a rising far right. But they also offer clues for how to overcome left divisions and build a united, popular progressive alliance to resist it.

Being on the left means aspiring to a society built on cooperation, solidarity, and the common good. Yet when it campaigns for this society, the left movement can be strangely reluctant to practice what it preaches. In Left Unity, a new Policy Network book, Marius Ostrowski outlines how progressives, from all parties and none, can better work together to overcome divisions and start to develop more comprehensive strategies to build a ‘progressive alliance’.

It what will be a deeply politically contested post-coronavirus era, perhaps now more than ever progressives must urgently set aside differences and make common cause.

 


Speakers

  • Marius Ostrowski​, examination fellow in politics, University of Oxford and author, Left Unity
  • Paul Mason, writer and journalist
  • Clive Lewis MP, Labour member of parliament for Norwich South
  • Molly Scott Cato, former Green member of European parliament for South West England

 


Listen again

A recording of this event is available here.

 


More information

This event is in partnership with Compass and will be broadcast as a webinar as part of their It’s Bloody Complicated podcast.

For more information, please contact event convenor Josh Newlove.