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GO BIG: How To Fix Our World

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Depending on where you fall on the political spectrum you may either view Ed Miliband as ‘the greatest prime minister we never had’ or some North London geek who lacks the ability to eat bacon sandwiches, as well as sharing an uncanny ressemblance with Wallace of Wallace and Gromit. It’s useful to remember that Miliband did not enter Parliament till 2005, after 13 years in a number of advisory positions during which time he took a year’s unpaid leave to attend Harvard as a Visiting Scholar, teaching economics. Most purchases from business sellers are protected by the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013 which give you the right to cancel the purchase within 14 days after the day you receive the item. Both the IMF and the OECD have now acknowledged that income inequality is the result of the weakening of unions, the latter concluding: “Growing inequality is harmful for long-term economic growth… the key driver is the growing gap between lower-income households… and the rest of the population.

The book is caked with a heavy dose of optimism, but it’s lofty ambitions are what allows it to rise above the obvious, and perhaps impossible, practicalities of getting any of it through parliament. The answer of course is that we are in a historical period where the capitalist system is declining in both profitability and stability. That compulsion, which fuels both of these books, might be thought of as the globalist gene, the unbending faith that things can only get better if people would only listen harder to the wisdom of progressive thinktanks. It shows that no matter how small you think you voice is, if you utilise it in the right manner you can ‘go big’. They also miss a fundamental shift in the economy, where it is clear that the size and role of the state will grow.

I've been a fan of RTBC podcast for several years now and it was great to read this manifesto for a better world that was inspired by the many big issues Ed and Geoff have explored over the years. The heart lifts at the essay on GDP, “That Which Makes Life Worthwhile”, which begins with a long prefatory quote from Robert Kennedy, three months before his assassination: “Gross national product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage… special locks for our doors and the jails for people who break them… the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl… napalm and… nuclear warheads and armoured cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities… Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play…. When I became Labour leader in 2010 I bought a copy of The Spirit Level (2009) by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson for everyone in my office.

The point of Miliband’s proposals are not to aid the working class in winning its struggles; nor even to gently popularise a limited form of economic democracy which could at some later date be adopted wholesale. The class nature of society is not perfectly reducible to every single action ever taken by every single boss and every single worker. Non of Ed's solutions are particularly radical in my mind - he cites numerous examples of how they have been successfully adopted elsewhere. But at last it feels as if the former Labour leader has reestablished himself as a thinker in his own right and no longer just another crony towing Keir’s (tangled) party line. Does he think that the opinions of a few thousand party members should have more say in the future of the UK than the other 60+ million people?As he likes to say, in a phrase that presupposes a different world to that in which we live, “global problems require global solutions”. But the value of these commodities is greater than the wages received by the workers – the excess, or surplus value, is taken by the owners of the company – the capitalists.

As long as there is no reckoning over political differences between different trends in the labour movement, we are unlikely to move forward with any clarity. Mention his name, even to those who spent 2010 to 2015 in despair at his lack of effective opposition to the Coalition government, and you will likely hear about what a nice man he is.It has this incredibly compelling character at the centre of it, Billy Beane, who picks players – and maybe this says something about where my sympathies lie – who are ‘flawed’, which means the market undervalues them.

We must go right to the source of value – the company’s workers exert their labour-power in productive processes. All in all, this was a worthwhile read and I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to learn about some of the more novel concepts in politics and the community. And long before Nick Clegg accepted Zuckerberg’s 30 million pieces of silver, Miliband was quick to spot his untrustworthiness – a judgment few would now disagree with. Norway was, until the discovery of oil in the 1960s, a relatively poor country on Europe’s periphery. We do care about each other, we do have a deep well of empathy…” That “we” becomes so insistent in the course of his book that you start to wonder who he means by it – all of his likely readers?This book shows that although he may have failed to show it in his election campaign he does in fact not lack passion or charisma. Miliband has remained in British politics since ceding the Labour leadership, and his book Go Big – based on his popular Reasons to be Cheerful podcast – argues that we are at a rare moment in history when people everywhere see the need for big change. Former Opposition Leader Ed Miliband has been presenting a podcast asking the big questions of leaders and here the ideas are distilled into a book. The ruling class achieves this through the state, with laws to constrain trade union activity, police repression of strikes, and surveillance of those who seek political change. I was surprised as I don't listen to the podcast and my impression of Miliband was not overly positive based on his political persona but this book is very personable.

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