Category: Uncategorized
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Reconstituting the Nations: Britain and Ireland after Brexit
This is the text of a talk given by Peter Ramsay to the Desmond Greaves Summer School 2024 in Dublin. He argues that the reconstitution of a sovereign nation-state in Britain depends on the achievement of Irish national sovereignty, and that the relation of the two nations exemplifies the inherent internationalism of the politics of…
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Why the Nation Matters
With a General Election looming, Peter Ramsay spoke last week at the London School of Economics about why the survival of the British nation is in doubt and why the politics of culture war are an evasion of the problem rather than a solution. Here is an edited version of what he said. Benedict Anderson…
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Their Fight, Not Ours
As the West goes to war against Yemen, Alex Gourevitch examines the demented character of Washington’s imperial policy in the Middle East and its remoteness from Americans’ national interest. In a recent comment, President Biden admitted that American attacks on the Houthis in Yemen were not working but that they would continue anyway. It is…
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The Embers
23 January 2024 Give Thermonuclear World War a Chance Russia’s conspicuous failure to make much westward progress through Ukraine appears not to have discouraged European leaders who are keen to stoke war fever and fear of ‘barbarians at the gates’ among their own citizens. In aspiring NATO member Sweden, a minister declared ‘there could be…
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The Embers
21 December 2023 Lockdown lowdown A think-tank report on poverty in the UK described lockdown as ‘the dynamite that blew … open’ the ‘yawning gap between those who can get by and those stuck at the bottom’. According to the report, during lockdown mental ill-health increased from one in nine young people to one in…
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Australia’s Brexit Moment
In our book Taking Control, the editors of The Northern Star argue that the Remainer response to Brexit exposed the liberal British elite’s fear and loathing of the masses of working people. Here Craig Smith explains how Australia has just experienced its own version of Britain’s Brexit moment, as citizens reject a proposed ‘indigenous Voice’…
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Eurocentric Cosmopolitanism
Peter Ramsay reviews Hans Kundnani, Eurowhiteness: Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project (Hurst, 2023)
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Brexit from NATO
“It took two decades of provocation by NATO before Russia was finally faced with the prospect of American nuclear missiles along its 1000 mile-long border with Ukraine and decided to invade.”
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New Section: Book Reviews
George Hoare reviews Oliver Eagleton, The Starmer Project: A Journey to the Right and Phil Hammond reviews Frank Furedi, The Road to Ukraine: How the West Lost its Way
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The Decay of Liberalism
“There is no hope for liberalism. It has reached the end of the road intellectually: standing itself on its head, subverting its founding commitments, unravelling into incoherence. For as long as decadent illiberal liberalism continues in power it will continue to degrade the state and to fragment civil society.”
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Analysis: Vulnerability as Ideology
In a series of three articles, Peter Ramsay argues that the concept of vulnerability provides an organising ideology for contemporary capitalist society, serving to present the interests of the powerful in maintaining the political and economic status quo as the interests of all.
The Northern Star 