Soundings Volume 2025 Issue 90 & 91

Print ISSN 1362-6620 - Online ISSN 1741-0797

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Hard Times for Labour

Contents

Editorial, pages 5‑9
Sally Davison Free to download
To take office in the name of structural change and reform without any accompanying consciousness and a popular mandate is to become the prisoner of the system. Stuart Hall, ‘Political Commitment’, 1966

Shrinking horizons: Starmerism and the politics of nothing, pages 10‑25
Will Leggett
Starmerism - somewhat remarkably - lacks both sociological insight and a clear and coherent set of values

‘Political commitment’ and us, pages 26‑40
Nick Beech

Political commitment, pages 41‑62
Stuart Hall [1966]

A diary from the wilderness: the search for a new political home, pages 63‑75
Nick Davidson
Life after Labour in North Islington CLP

Feeling political? Turbulent emotions in the age of Starmer and Reform UK, pages 76‑91
Sarah Bufkin, John Clarke, Jo Littler Free to download
Is it possible to imagine an ‘emotionally intelligent’ progressive politics?

Slaying monsters? Forms of opposition and resistance under the current Labour government, pages 92‑105
Rosalind Brunt
Does local and national activism, including from the UK labour movement, contain the seeds of radical political change?

‘I would prefer for the genocide to stop than for Starmer to recognise Palestine’, pages 106‑122
Sarah Bufkin interviews Kamel Hawwash

The UK government and artificial intelligence: embracing the vampire, pages 123‑141
Carl Rowlands Free to download
The government’s uncritical embrace of AI is binding the UK to companies that are draining the economy and embedding technological dependence.

What is Labour doing on migration?, pages 142‑161
Frances Webber, Joseph Maggs talk to Kirsten Forkert

No new dawn for renters, pages 162‑177
Adam Peggs
Political horizons far beyond ‘renters’ reform’ are necessary for a just housing system.

What media do we need in an era of Trump and Reform?, pages 178‑192
Natalie Fenton, Des Freedman, Anamik Saha, Justin Schlosberg, Francesca Sobande, Gavan Titley

Reflections on the international crisis, pages 193‑207
Michael Rustin
How should Labour respond to the continuing collapse of the old world order?

Border by contract, pages 208‑224
Thomas J. Williams
Britain’s border regime increasingly operates through routinised administrative coercion

From punk rebellion to happy consumerism: Utopia and alternatives in Chinese popular culture, pages 225‑237
Zixuan Liu
The story of Chinese punk band The Flowers suggests that even when overt dissent is thinned out, small utopian sparks may still persist

Feminism, neoliberalism and the ‘Great Moving Right Show’, pages 238‑256
Angela McRobbie
Gender is a consistently mobilised concept in the shift from neoliberalism to populist authoritarianism

The limits and paradoxes of solidarity: some notes on the Iranian uprising and genocide in Palestine, pages 257‑275
Gholam Khiabany Free to download
What does it mean to profess solidarity while denying sovereignty?