Ash Sarkar

“There is something deeply wrong with a political culture which only wants to talk about incarceration in the aftermath of a tragedy.”

“No one but the ruling class wins in a culture war.”

“The demand for adequate social housing provision is something that transcends race, religion and settled status.”

“It's worth pointing out that conflicts between racially oppressed people often result from the fact that colonialism worked on divide and rule. Certain ethnic, religious, racial or indigenous groups were deliberately privileged over others in order to create a sense of investment in upholding the power structure.”

“It's important to recognise that opposing racism isn't just about presenting an alternative set of values; it's about looking at how the far right play on people's hardships in order to nurture a sense of enmity between white people and those racialised as migrants.”

“There shouldn't be a barrier between rich and poor in terms of the kind of health care that they can access.”

“The idea of the NHS took root in the political imagination less as an example of social entitlement's victory over private provision, and more as the embodiment of brand Britain.”

“The launch of the National Health Service in 1948, one of the world's foremost examples of something being decommodified in the interest of the social good, was met with nothing less than horror by those with vested interests in the private provision of medicine.”

“Ezra Pound was a pioneer of the most exciting aesthetic movement of the 20th century.”

“Human labor cannot compete with fixed capital - that's just a fact.”

“It is up to us to push for a transformation in political culture in which the basic human dignity of migrants is unequivocally respected.”

“Lots of us have been plugging away, building a platform to talk about libertarian communism and post-scarcity economics.”

“The reason Brexiteers have been so effective is that they have made the fight about broad political values.”

“Immigration has tremendously changed the fabric of this country. Immigration is what built our NHS, when Britain invited people from the Commonwealth, from nations it had formerly colonized, in order to rebuild this country after the ravages of the Second World War.”

“My great-great-aunt was a terrorist. I'm not talking about the sense in which the pacifist Mahatma Gandhi was branded a terrorist by the British parliament in 1932: Pritilata Waddedar was an active participant in armed struggle against the British state. She supplied explosives. She fired a gun. And I'm proud of it.”

“The left cannot be complicit in the marginalisation of Palestinian people in the interest of fighting racism. We can, and we must, do much better than that.”

“While I agree that embracing vibrancy and joy is an essential bulwark against the left's tendency towards energy-sapping endless meetings, pop culture alone won't save us from racism.”

“So, there are lots of different reasons why people came out to protest Boris Johnson, but what they were united in was their disdain for a system which has imposed a prime minister who is deeply divisive on the rest of the electorate.”

“More draconian forms of policing and punishment are no guarantee of a reduction in violent crime.”

“Our modern understanding of cultural appropriation is highly individualised. It's all about what Halloween costume you wear, or who's cooking biryani. But the way in which the idea was first used was to describe a relationship of dominance and exploitation between a global ruling class and a globally subjugated one.”