Analysis

two men sitting next to each other in suits, smiling

Analysis: Pseudoscience, Think Tanks and ‘Intellectual Landscaping’: Exposing the Wilful Ignorance of the Right

Since the 1950s, dozens of think tanks, quangos and commissions have sprung up to lend intellectual weight to government policies, from counter-extremism to coronavirus. These institutions, often government-funded and pseudo-intellectual, seek to undermine the role of academia as an impartial and rigorous advisor to ministers. Never has such advice been more needed - it’s time for universities to reassert themselves.

Analysis: A Regime of ‘Flexible Despotism’ Reigns Over Retail Work – Can It Last?

Ever had to beg your boss for suitable shifts? Alex Wood explains how 'flexible discipline' - whereby managers discipline workers by altering their schedule - has become prevalent in retail work, and how it may yet fuel workers' sense of injustice.

Residents and their families in an elderly care home.

Analysis: Money Alone Won’t Fix the Care Crisis – We Need a Radical Rethink

Perma-austerity and the persistent devaluation of care work have left social care in a deficit of millions. But throwing money at the problem won’t make it go away. What we need is a radical rethink, writes Emma Dowling - one that puts care workers and the communities they serve at the helm.

A shopper carrying a supermarket basket.

Analysis: Organising in Supermarkets Means Overcoming Barriers in the Sector – and in the Trade Unions

The future of supermarkets is both the future of a socially necessary service and the future of around 1m workers in the UK today. But overcoming the barriers to organising in the sector means getting to grips with its complexities - and accounting for the failures of unions like Usdaw. Max O'Donnell Savage writes.

Analysis: ‘Capitalism’s Wet Dream’: Amazon’s Patents Signal the Future It Hopes to Achieve

By filing hundreds of patents a year, Amazon publishes its ideas for new technologies and ways of managing workers. As part of our focus on the future of work, Alessandro Delfanti explores some of the technological futures Amazon has in mind.

Analysis: The Tories’ New Support Scheme Shows They’re Adapting to Our New Reality. The Left Must Do the Same

While the Tories' new Job Support Scheme is in no way sufficient in meeting the challenge of rebuilding the economy, it does, however, signal a tentative acceptance of the need for developing a longer-term strategy in adapting to our new Covid reality. It is therefore vital, writes James Meadway, that the left forms a response of its own.

The author being moved in a hoist by a personal assistant.

Analysis: Disabled People and Care Workers Must Build Common Cause in the Fight for Better Conditions

Organising carers against disabled people would do nothing to leverage power against the only people who can affect the real terms and conditions of the industry, writes Jamie Hale. The left must instead work to build solidarity between care workers and the disabled people who rely on them to ensure that neither is exploited.

Analysis: Our Financialised Care System is Built on a House of Cards – We Urgently Need to Rebuild It

Care homes in the UK, like much of the care sector, are highly financialised - but there are signs the model is faltering. If we’re going to improve care quality as well as wages and conditions in the sector, we need to build both worker and user-led power, argue Annie Quick and Alice Martin.

Two people sat facing shuttered high street shops.

Analysis: Why the Decline of High Street Retail Could Have Troubling Consequences for Our Freedom

Coronavirus is killing the high street, further accelerating us into a world of big data and algorithm-mediated shopping. Alan Bradshaw argues the shift could have dangerous political implications, allowing corporations to structure and rationalise our lives in previously unimagined ways.

A supermarket worker wearing a face mask.

Analysis: Supermarket Workers Have Power – It’s Time They Got Organised

Supermarket workers hold significant collective power over the economy - a power only compounded by the pandemic. Despite a history of underorganisation, Jessica Thorne and Seth Wheeler argue that mobilising the sector is now a matter of strategic necessity.

Analysis: The Road to Moria: How Greece’s Refugee Disaster Became Business As Usual

The fires that destroyed a refugee camp on the island of Lesbos and displaced 13,000 people have prompted international concern about the treatment of migrants at Europe's borders. Yet in Greece, the horrors of Moria are filtered through a terrifying banality which makes them seem like business as usual, explains Yannis-Orestis Papadimitriou.

Analysis: Beyond Bernie: How the Democratic National Convention Sidelined Progressives

In the wake of the Democratic National Convention, which saw the party become the mouthpiece of bipartisan corporate elites, progressives at the Democratic base are growing more disillusioned than ever. Freddie Stuart takes a closer look in the fifth instalment of Beyond Bernie, a series tracking the US elections.

Analysis: ‘Fuck the Algorithm’: How A-Level Students Have Shown the Future of Protest

Aside from their much deserved success in forcing the government to ditch algorithmically-moderated A-level grades, protesting students have signalled an increasingly salient area of politicisation. James Meadway takes a closer look at the use and abuse of data within our systems of governance.

Analysis: How Progressive Is Joe Biden’s New Vice President?

After months of anticipation, Democratic nominee Joe Biden has finally announced that his running mate will be junior senator Kamala Harris. Freddie Stuart and Aaron White take a closer look at Harris’ record and what her selection means for the future of a surging progressive movement in the United States.

Analysis: Beyond Bernie: Down-Ballot Races to Watch in August and September

As the Democratic primaries head into their seventh month, in the fourth instalment of our series on the US 2020 elections, Freddie Stuart and Aaron White take stock of some recent key victories and losses, and give a run-down of the races still to come this summer.

Analysis: Outrage Drives Clicks, Rage Sells Stories: The Brutal Economy of the Culture War

With Twitter begrudgingly apologising for its slow response to musician Wiley’s antisemitic rant, despite it violating the site's guidelines for hate speech, it comes as no surprise that the posts stayed up for as long as they did, writes Sam Harrison. Twitter is merely following the economic logic of the ‘culture-industrial complex’, which sees media companies profit off of online controversy.

Analysis: BBC Panorama Investigation Into Labour Antisemitism Omitted Key Evidence and Parts of Labour’s Response

Exclusive: As Labour agrees to pay out nearly £600k in damages and legal costs, Justin Schlosberg reveals how the BBC's Panorama investigation into Labour antisemitism omitted email evidence and key parts of Labour’s pre-broadcast reply.

Analysis: Revenge Spending Won’t Save Us From Capitalism in Crisis

Neoliberal capitalism produces a spirit of vengeance that we see play out culturally, politically and economically - and which most harshly impacts the young and racialised. Revenge shopping is an expression of this vengeance, writes Max Haiven; the same system that causes our sufferings offers us false fantasies and practices of toothless revenge that, ultimately, simply reproduce that very same system.