Blog
2024
Lessons in Power: what can the new Labour government learn from the last one?
Michael Jacobs and Mems Ayinla - 9 July 2024A brand new podcast series from 'SPERI Presents...' invites former advisors and ministers from the 1997-2010 Labour governments to reflect on lessons for Starmer and his Cabinet. Listen on Spotify.
How the fallout of Liz Truss’s premiership narrows economic discussion in British politics
Dillon Wamsley - 26 June 2024Despite being the shortest serving Prime Minister in British history, Liz Truss’s premiership has cast a much wider shadow over British politics. In the leadup to the 2024 election, the economic discussion has been dominated by a conservative macroeconomic consensus consolidating in the aftermath of her downfall.
The election arms race is on - but what role for Yorkshire steel?
Joseph Ward and Gregory Stiles - 7 May 2024Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer have both been touting their defence and security credentials in recent weeks. Here we test the feasibility of this ‘election arms race’ and examine the role the steel sector might play in relation to it, both nationally and locally throughout South Yorkshire.
The politics of embedding a new economic consensus
Tony Payne - 15 April 2024Rachel Reeve's Mais Lecture charts a new economic course for Labour - but what will it take to embed a new economic consensus?
Why Sinoscepticism will remake British politics
Liam Stanley - 25 March 2024‘Sinoscepticism’, which we can define as a political position defined by opposition to the increasing power of China and its ruling Communist Party, prompts questions: why has this position become so prominent and what effects will it have? This piece is based on newly published research by the author.
Why the NHS is in crisis: an answer at three levels
Benjamin Stokes - 18 March 2024If we can only face looking back so far as the Covid pandemic and the political dynamics set in motion from 2010 - highly significant as they are - we’ll be missing the full story.
Materialising the immaterial, via the Belfast peace walls
Michael Livesey - 05 February 2024During the ‘Troubles’, the British Army and Government built ‘peace walls’ in Northern Irish cities to separate predominantly Catholic/nationalist from predominantly Protestant/unionist neighbourhoods. These walls imprinted ‘immaterial’ ideas about the relationship between social class and violence within ‘material’ structures of city space.