My new book, How to Fight Inequality, is published today. I look back at when inequality had been beaten before, and found that inequality was never beaten through the grace of saviour leaders, but was instead beaten by people power. Here, I discuss what it will take beat inequality and to organise that people power once again.
You're not being bold enough. I don't mean that you should be going out. Stay at home, covidiots! I'm writing this from home in Italy - and just as it is said...
You can taste the pollution at Kankoyo. Not just smell it, you can taste the air. Welcome to Kankoyo, Zambia, welcome to the Mopani Mufulira mine that has...
As activists we sometimes talk as if we know the answers. As researchers we get to admit that we don't (until publication, of course :-)). As both an...
When you meet your heroes, you wonder what they will be like in person. When they are really as special as they seemed from afar, that's inspirational....
The words we never thought they'd say have recently turned from a trickle into a mighty river. The very building block of any decent society, commitment to...
"Ben, Martin, I have to introduce you to each other," said an Irish writer who knew us both. It was Dublin March 2016, and we were there to commemorate...
A powerful new report finally kills off any remaining intellectual veil for a broken economics that is breaking society. Sometimes an ideology is so...
A dominant worldview amongst many progressives in recent times has been that over time things will keep getting better, sometimes with exhilarating speed,...
[Across Africa, tens of thousands of grassroots women activists have been organising rallies and mobilisations as part of #women2kilimanajro, a march and...
It is said that one difference between British English and American English is that when Americans say "you really must visit us sometime" they hope and...
Britain has brexited. What next? The pound and the PM are freefalling, but that's not the big thing even now. The big thing is the rejection of almost the...
Many are, undertandably, asking what are the lessons of Jo's death. But those who had the privilege of working with Jo feel too raw to answer that. Instead,...
The awkward squad – why development depends on dialogue and dissent. This article was first published by Vice-Versa, in Dutch, here. Hundreds of thousands of...
Sometimes, the best way to avoid doing something is to pretend that you agree. Let's say that you are a political leader, or a corporate leader, who rather...
[Transcript of Ben Phillips's address at the Irish Embassy in Kenya's commemoration of the Easter Rising on 24th April 2016] I’ve been asked to share...
The media and political classes in Britain are in shock at the dramatic resignation of the minister in charge of welfare, Iain Duncan Smith. He had been seen...
My job is to challenge the causes of poverty. That means that I spend a lot of time highlighting the gross injustices that I have witnessed people face. This...
Right in front of us, the chair of the Paris climate talks burst into tears.Her tears were the most appropriate summary of the summary of the draft deal. The...
The Town called Coal In the town centre the austere concrete municipal building is still inscribed with the old Apartheid-era name name Witbank, but the town...
If the politics of climate change end up polarised, is that so bad? No – it’s disastrous. Or so I’ve long thought. Look at the US – where climate is even more polarised than abortion. Result: decades of flip flopping. Ambition under Clinton; reversal...
Official development assistance (ODA) – or aid – is a small but conspicuous pillar of the international order, and its frailties are being exposed by COVID as surely as those of the other foundations of this order. The assumptions underpinning aid and its management...
Since its onset, one striking feature of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has been the narrative power of its novelty. This global narrative depicts COVID-19 pushing humanity towards a ‘historical divide’ of BC and AC (before and after COVID-19), where unknown,...