DiEM25

Anti-capitalists had a miserable year. But so did capitalism.

While the defeat of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party in the UK this month threatened the radical left’s momentum, particularly in the US, where the presidential primaries loom, capitalism found itself under fire from some unexpected quarters.

Is capitalism past its due date? Can we even imagine a world without it? On 14th November 2019 Martin Wolf and Yanis Varoufakis debated the question ‘Should liberal capitalism be saved?’. Hosted on November 14, 2019 by the Financial Times to celebrate the Wincott Foundation’s 50th Anniversary, this special live event took the place of the usual annual Harold Wincott Memorial Lecture.

Every year for nearly 70 years, the Guardian has collected the best of its journalism into a book – the BEDSIDE GUARDIAN. This year,  Bedside Guardian 2019 is edited by Aditya Chakrabortty with Paul Johnson, deputy editor, alongside  Jonathan Freedland, Zoe Williams Emma Graham-Harrison. The editors were kind enough to ask me to write the Foreword.

On the next phase of Europe’s transnational progressive movement

PRAGUE ADDRESS, 22nd
November 2019

We come from all over Europe. From across borders, party lines and with different views of the good society. We are united by these differences. Europe will be democratised. Or it will disintegrate. This is not a scare tactic. It is a fact! The EU’s disintegration is happening. New divisions, new walls, are springing up. Along borders. Inside our societies. In people’s minds.

As harsh austerity and xenophobic nationalism fester in Europe, Yanis Varoufakis discusses his antidote with Tellus Senior Fellow Allen White.

What inspired your career trajectory from academic economist to prominent supranational activist?

The Green Party MP and the MeRA25 leader journey from democracy’s inception through the tumultuous Brexit period and through to the year 2035

There’s chaos on the streets of Westminster as the activists of Extinction Rebellion bring traffic to a standstill to highlight the urgency of action on the climate crisis. If the old democracy is not working, perhaps new ways of making ourselves heard are required.

Last April, again in The Guardian, David Adler and I called for a particular Green New Deal to be implemented internationally. Now that a new recession is ante portas, we are renewing this call, suggesting that we cannot afford yet another ‘good’ economic crisis to go to waste.

It is with profound regret, and after much reflection, that I am pulling out as a speaker at an interesting and worthy international conference organised by TRT World in Istanbul on 21st October. I do so in protest of the Turkish armed forces’ invasion of Northern Syria.

This morning, in Greece’s Parliament, MeRA25’s parliamentarians are staging an all-out struggle against the ratification of disastrous contracts between the previous (SYRIZA) government and multinational oil companies.