Archive for March 1st, 2010

An Age of Anger: The London Review of Books and the British Crisis of Democracy

Gerry Hassan

Open Democracy, March 1st 2010

The current crisis of the British state, politics and democracy should be a golden moment for radicals, constitutional reformers and campaigners. It should also be an era in which left and liberal publications have the opportunity to engage and involve a wider audience about the state of the nation and democracy.

One of those publications is the ‘London Review of Books’, which sees itself as urbane, cosmopolitan, liberal minded, addressing British concerns and global issues in a challenging and open-minded way. In particular, LRB has made a name for itself addressing such issues as the nature of the Israeli state and power of the Israel lobby, which most mainstream media would not touch. It is all the more interesting that the one area in which it has consistently failed to find an authentic radical voice is in its coverage of contemporary British politics.

LRB’s coverage of British politics often entails what are presented as thoughtful essays by Ross McKibbon, but there is always something missing in them, a lack of forensic detail, or more acutely, what case the analysis presented is meant to be building towards. Most pieces on Britain feel like a liberal dinner table conversation of the sort you would find parodied on ‘Bremner, Bird and Fortune’. Read the rest of this entry »