Publications

Gareth Forest (Lewis), Anna Markova (November 2021): The UK government has enshrined targets that align with official scientific advice on climate change. While it has publicly announced very ambitious goals it has only hesitantly taken up steps to support the decarbonisation of domestic industries. A comprehensive, socially and ecologically sustainable industrial strategy that is co-designed by and with workers is still lacking. Social justice, gender justice, decent work and collective bargaining are essential components of this historical structural change, achievable only through worker participation, and without them a just transition will be impossible to realise.

Patrick Briône (September 2021): The road to net zero carbon emissions poses risks for the workforce if not handled carefully. The concept of a just transition – where jobs and livelihoods are protected and workers are reskilled to find new green jobs – is gaining in importance across the UK and the world. To succeed, a just transition requires partnership between the workforce and employers, including a strong worker voice. Government also has a vital role to play, facilitating this dialogue at regional and sectoral level and providing strategic leadership, though this engagement is still lacking.

Parties of the Left need to invest time, energy and money in digital campaigning. It is no longer a ›nice to have‹, but is an essential tool for effective political campaigning in the modern era. What the Left needs to learn on digital campaigns is outlined in this paper by Mike Buckley and Nolan MacGregor on the example of the UK General Election 2019.

Tarik Abou-Chadi; Reto Mitteregger; Cas Mudde (July 2021): Social democratic parties in Western Europe have been experiencing an electoral decline of historic proportions in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. At the same time, radical right parties have been experiencing unprecedented electoral success. This has paved the way for a common narrative that claims that social democratic parties have lost their working-class voters to radical right parties either because of their shift to the right on the economic dimension (“Third Way”) or because of their shift to the left on the cultural dimension (“identity politics”). This narrative is wrong in both its assumptions and its assertions.

Jannike Wachowiak (June 2021): There was palpable relief when the EU and UK concluded the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) on Christmas Eve 2020, pulling both sides back from the brink of a no-deal cliff edge. But hopes that concluding a Brexit deal would mark the beginning of a more constructive relationship have faded quickly since. However, there is a particularly strong rationale for cooperation regarding climate action. The importance of a joint EU–UK climate leadership is further heightened by the current global context. After the pandemic-induced one-year delay, the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) is finally taking place in the first half of November 2021, hosted by the UK in Glasgow. The EU and UK should use this opportunity to strategically – and jointly – push for increased global ambition.

Tim Bale (June 2021): Labour has retained the support of the country’s poorest workers, but has been losing support among working people in general. While the Conservatives have been successful in uniting the Leave vote, Labour’s equivocal stance on Brexit led to the party winning only the support of half of all Remain voters. The Conservatives’ campaign combined impressive message discipline with a highly sophisticated polling, advertising and social media campaign, run by a team of external consultants. All this stood in complete contrast to Labour’s seriously dysfunctional, largely in-house campaign.

Gerry Mitchell (April 2021): This paper looks at the impact of COVID-19 on care workers and the people they care for in England. It explains why the care sector was so vulnerable to and ill-equipped for the pandemic and charts the delayed government response to it and how that was further impeded by a lack of integration between health and social care. It documents trade union campaigning on the health and safety of workers, the lack of or inadequate personal protective equipment (PPE), sick pay, accommodation and access to testing as well as their fight for longer-term reform, emphasising how the immediate problems in the sector are connected to its longer-term systemic issues. These campaigns have also focused on shifting public opinion about the status and value of care work and the need to address structural inequalities.

Dave Watson (March 2021): This paper sets out how the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted on older persons in Scotland and how the care system has responded during the first infection wave in 2020. It will also show how the trade union movement has reacted to the pandemic and its programme of reform to address the issues the pandemic has highlighted. This is one of nine reports that make up the project "On the Corona Frontline" which analyses elder care in the context of the Coronavirus pandemic.

(Matthew Donoghue, Mikko Kuisma, eds.: December 2020) With the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union, it is appropriate to reflect on the future social pathways now open to the European Union, made more possible perhaps by the UK’s exit. For example, could Brexit result in an EU in which considerations of social citizenship and rights are elevated up the agenda in Brussels? Could the EU’s focus hitherto on ever-closer economic union and international competitiveness be shifted towards the European Pillar of Social Rights so as to strengthen it, make it more tangible in citizens’ lives and central to a renewed EU agenda?

Multiple authors (November 2020): Brexit poses a risk for Euro­pean Security as the highly institutionalised relations based on EU membership change, and prevailing cer­tainties seem to disappear. In order to maintain a close relationship on foreign and security policy, smaller and more infor­mal alliances like the E3, a setting of trilateral relations between the UK, France and Germany, will gain importance.