Thursday 25 May 2017

My first articles for CounterPunch

So I've submitted two articles to CounterPunch, one of the biggest English language newsletters and websites on the left. It's a great pleasure and honour to be published alongside such writers as Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn. I hope these two articles are the first of many contributions to CounterPunch.

My first contribution is entitled 'There is no regressive left' looks at the so-called 'regressive left' (as you might have guessed!) and what kind of people tend to deploy this term. I argue the phrase comes out of the Cold War divisions between the liberal left and the radical left, the latter took the side of the establishment against the former. Essentially, the term 'regressive left' is used to police radical thought and dress up the rightward surrender of liberals as something noble.

My second article takes a look at Jeremy Corbyn's speech on foreign policy at Chatham House. It takes apart the ideas of the Cook doctrine, the 'ethical foreign policy' of the first Blair term and how this quickly turned into a sloppy pretext for endless wars in the Middle East. I argue that Corbyn has emptied out the notion of an 'ethical foreign policy' and redrawn its limits to exclude the most hawkish elements of Blairism. He coopts and subverts the Cook doctrine for his own ends.

This is just a starting point for future writing. Watch this space.

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