It is easier to diagnose a crisis than to cure it, of course.
— Owen Jones
Political linguists have argued that the right often uses stories to make an argument, while the left falls back on facts and statistics.
Turkey is a warning: democracy is precious but fragile. It underlines how rights and freedoms are often won at great cost and sacrifice but can be stripped away by regimes exploiting national crises.
Our social model means economic growth all too often involves concentrating wealth produced by the many into the bank accounts of the few, without improving the lives of the majority.
The liberation of workers from excessive work was one of the pioneering demands of the labour movement.
If only Brexit would go away. It sucks the political oxygen away from the issues we should all be discussing: like low wages, insecure jobs and the housing crisis.
Freedom of movement in Europe has been all but abandoned as a cause in British politics. Brexit was far more about freedom of movement than our exact trading relationship with the EU, and the electorate rejected it.
My dad saw himself as part of a historic struggle for human liberation: he met my mum canvassing for the Labour party in a snowstorm in Tooting, he helped lead strikes, and recruited miners to socialism.
Grief is like wandering through a minefield, as my mother puts it: however carefully you tread, a sudden detonation can happen out of nowhere. A song played in a supermarket; an overheard phrase; someone in the distance who your mind cruelly suggests is your loved one for a fleeting moment.
A sneer can often reveal far more about the sneerer than the object of their derision.
Labour's mission is to democratise Britain: but first, it must surely democratise itself.
Socialism is the democratisation of every level of society, or it is nothing. It is based on an understanding that the concentration of wealth and power leaves democracy hollowed out, and that simply trooping to a polling station every few years is an insufficient counterweight to the behemoths of global capital.
In the 1980s, the trade unions suffered a series of calamitous setbacks. Mass unemployment terrified workers into not risking the wrath of bosses. Repressive anti-union laws stunted the ability of workers to organise and defend their rights.
Britain's police force is institutionally racist. This was the judgement of the 1999 Macpherson report, and it remains the case.
Who can begrudge the generosity of the wealthy, you might say. Wherever you stand on the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a tiny global elite, surely such charity should be applauded? But philanthropy is a dangerous substitution for progressive taxation.
We are unlikely to spend our last moments regretting that we didn't spend enough of our lives chained to a desk. We may instead find ourselves rueing the time we didn't spend watching our children grow, or with our loved ones, or travelling, or on the cultural or leisure pursuits that bring us happiness.
From a genuine living wage to a mass housebuilding programme and strong workers' and trade unions rights preventing a race to the bottom, our answers to the grievances that help drive anti-immigrant sentiment must be front and centre.
A society should be judged by how it treats its children. A country that fails to invest in its children is imperilling its future.
We recognise that, like us, other humans have insecurities and ambitions; we fall in love and have relationships that end in heartbreak; we worry about our children's wellbeing; we say things we regret; we're occasionally kept awake by fears or worries; and we try to impress people we look up to.
Turkey's regime is fast degenerating into outright dictatorship, emboldened by the imminent ascent of Donald Trump to the most powerful position on Earth.
So much of our lives is surrendered to subordinating ourselves to the needs and whims of others, turning human beings into cash cows rather than independent, well-rounded individuals.
Yes, we need action to deal with online hatred and abuse. But let's make sure there are clear safeguards, or history will repeat itself, and peaceful opponents of an unjust status quo will suffer the consequences.
But a rejection of freedom of movement within Europe's own boundaries does not strengthen the case for accepting more migrants and refugees from outside: the reverse, in fact.
The Tories have built a system defined by insecurity - from wages to job contracts to housing to the welfare state. If they want to understand why socialism - long dead, never coming back, or so they thought - has undergone a revival, this is why.
Having some form of structure to process and manage grief collectively surely helps: as someone put it to me, grief is like a landscape without a map. Another suggested that grief makes you a stranger to yourself.
If you've never lived outside London, and if you've always had a car, it's difficult to understand how dire bus services undermine your standard of living: from being able to get to work, meet friends in the pub, get the weekly shop or take the kids on a day out.
Austerity is literally a matter of life and death. Unless it is stopped, lives will continue to be unnecessarily shortened.
Genuine democracy is frequently messy, not stage-managed.
A party committed to defending the economic interests of rich elites could never win by saying so.
In the hyper-exploitative sector of retail and hospitality, workers are made to feel worthless - undeserving of a proper wage and genuine security.
We need global tax justice, not charitable scraps dictated by the fancies of the elite.
But cutting the working week would free the individual, giving millions of workers more time to spend as they see fit. Human freedom should be the core aim of modern socialism. The right to work less would be an act of liberation - and a cause the left should embrace.
Austerity and economic insecurity have collided with the scapegoating of migrants and refugees, at a time when global instability and warfare have driven millions to flee violence and persecution, a minority of whom have arrived on European shores to be met with hostility.
We need to organise unapologetically anti-racist campaigns in our communities, ones that emphasise the fact that the blame for social ills lies with the powerful.
Restoring our shared humanity isn't easy, not least because powerful interests - from media outlets to politicians - relentlessly seek to undermine it. But it is the only hope for a troubled world.
Almost all human beings have the capacity for empathy. Everyone has the potential to be at least troubled, or feel genuine anguish, about the suffering of other human beings.
Democracy is a bundle of rights and freedoms wrestled from the powerful. Our rulers only surrender their power when compelled to - when the cost of resisting pressure from below becomes greater than the cost of giving ground to it.
Increased public ownership of the economy should be structured to create more worker self-management and control.
Few would deny the importance of tackling online hatred or child abuse content. The internet, after all, has become a key weapon for those who disseminate and incite hatred and violence against minorities, and for those who pose a horrifying threat to children.
Yes, there is some evidence that migration can slightly depress wages at the bottom end of the labour market, but that's an argument for a genuine living wage, for ensuring all workers are employed on the same terms and conditions, and for extending unionisation.
In a society rigged in favour of landlords over tenants, to rent privately is to be deprived of security.
The bereaved are often treated badly. There is no statutory paid bereavement leave, with the emotionally stunned often compelled to work within days of losing a loved one.
If you live in London, where politicians and media commentators spend most of their time, you are spoilt for transport choices - trains, an extensive underground network and a regular bus service.
For decades, life expectancy steadily rose in Britain: and then, suddenly, just as the Tories took power and imposed austerity, this improvement ground to a halt.
One of the greatest own goals in modern British political history helped create one of the biggest political parties in the western world, but one committed to socialism rather than rehashed Blairite triangulation.
Neoliberalism has left Britain's boss classes drunk on triumphalism, paying themselves record salaries and bonuses while their workers are imprisoned by poverty and insecurity. It was never going to last.
Britain's unions were broken and battered by Thatcherism and never recovered.
The decision on how philanthropic money is spent is made on the whims and personal interests of the wealthy, rather than what is best.
A huge portion of our lives involves the surrender of our freedom and personal autonomy. It is time in which we are directed by the needs and whims of others, and denied the right to make our own choices.
Britain in 2018 has the feel of a Netflix drama approaching its season finale. It's the classic 'how on earth does anyone get out of this one?' kind of cliffhanger, with all of the key protagonists confronted by their nemesis.
