Tag: City St George’s

Co-working forges ahead in post-pandemic world

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At lunchtime on an ordinary autumn Tuesday, co-working space Shoreditch Exchange is buzzing with young office workers. In the heart of one of London’s trendiest quarters, people are playing table tennis, enjoying free coffee from the workplace’s own barista and taking part in the day’s special activity – soap-making.

The COVID pandemic upended the way that we work. Working from home, or cafés, was once the preserve of freelance writers and designers – now hybrid working has become the norm for many office staff.

Co-working, in which freelancers or employees of different firms share office space, and often leisure facilities, existed before the pandemic.  But as big firms increasingly demand their employees back in the office five days a week, where does co-working fit in?

“The world of co-working has completely changed,” David Kaiser, chief executive of Oneder, which operates Shoreditch Exchange, told The Sentinel in an interview.

It’s no longer just about freelancers sharing space, but also about big companies who want to scale the size of their office space up and down more easily, Kaiser said. Companies are renting whole floors in co-working spaces, where lease lengths tend to be shorter than for traditional offices, though this gap is narrowing.

Mandeep Soor, CEO and co-founder of AI start-up Bendi, is enthusiastic about Shoreditch Exchange. “In the year we’ve been here, we’ve grown as a start-up and then shrunk again — and the team has been super flexible,” she said. “We’ve also made a bunch of friends here with other founders at the same stage as us, sharing everything from tips around funding to testing the early versions of our product.”

However, the model remains of co-working spaces providing facilities such as free tea and coffee and social activities such as yoga or running clubs. 

At one point, co-working seemed like it might have been a bubble. Lockdowns and work from home mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic dented the appeal of these short-term office tenancies. Co-working giant WeWork, for example, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for its U.S. and Canadian businesses in November 2023. However, it came out of bankruptcy last year.

The global flexible office market is projected to triple from $45.24 billion in 2025 to $136.46 billion by 2032, according to Fortune Business Insights. And Britain is in the forefront of this trend. Co-working was available in 4,315 locations in the UK and Ireland in the third quarter of 2025, making the region “one of the most extensively networked markets in the world”, according to a report from co-working listing service Coworking Cafe.

It’s unusual for people to come into a co-working space every day, Kaiser said, reflecting continued demand from staff for flexible working. Around 1.1 million employees say they left a job in the last year due to a lack of flexible working, according to a report from UK human resources professional body CIPD. This is particularly the case for younger employees, the report said.

However, half of organisations which offer hybrid working have put incentives in place to encourage employees to be at their workplace more often, the CIPD report said.

“Every company has a different approach to mandated office work but the majority of companies want people in the office, for productivity, for the culture, to avoid loneliness,” Kaiser said.

“To get people back to an office, you have to entice them. You need to create these environments that are vibrant and fun and offer experiences they can’t get anywhere else. You also need office wifi, good coffee, good connectivity – you have to get the basics right.”

Doron Meyassed, CEO of holiday home platform Plum Guide, said that his staff were excited to be at Shoreditch Exchange “because of the atmosphere, the welcoming team and the variety of events”.

Fleura Bardhi, professor of marketing at City St George’s, University of London, said demand for co-working reflected “how  much consumption is embedded in work”.

“Your lifestyle is blended with work. For young generations, it’s very important to be in workplaces that fit their consumer identity,” she told The Sentinel, adding that some co-working spaces allow pets and storage, “it’s an extension of their living spaces”.

However, Kaiser said it was not just young people who use co-working space: “We have a variety of ages in our buildings, a variety of sectors, from tech to law firms to financial services.”

Two-year-old Oneder already operates four co-working spaces in London, with two more to open in 2026.

Bardhi said traditional offices should take lessons from co-working on how to attract employees, “it made work meaningful, so that’s why people stayed.” But Bardhi also said there was a risk in making your office more fun: “If everything is work, your hobby is work, there are no boundaries.” 

Bardhi said that for some people, it gets to the point where they say “I’m burnt out of having fun. I don’t want to see anybody, I don’t want to play any more.”

But for Kaiser, fun is part of the appeal, as co-working offers a space “people want to come to, not have to go to”.

Explaining the strength of European populism

Posted on by Jonathan

Why does right-wing populism appear so strong in Europe?

In a recent sign of its success, a populist party led by billionaire businessman Andrej Babis won parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic in October. Other European Union (EU) countries Hungary and Italy also have populist leaders.

In France, the government of centrist president Emmanuel Macron narrowly survived a no-confidence vote. The government has been flip-flopping after Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu resigned after 26 days, only to return four days later. Macron faces a challenge in the polls from the far-right National Rally, led by Marine Le Pen.

The populist Reform UK is also doing strongly in opinion polls, while Germany’s right-wing AfD party has won state elections in the past year.

The rise of European populism is hard to counteract, because of the continent’s economic performance. Europe is lagging in both technology and  manufacturing, says Ronen Palan, professor of international politics at City St George’s, University of London.

“The fundamental problem that Europe faces is that the fourth industrial revolution skipped it,” Palan told Yuvoice in an interview.

“You have the American companies,  the Magnificent Seven – Meta, Apple etc. There is nothing in Europe remotely like that. Manufacturing excellence is now in China – China is far advanced. Europe is squeezed in between. Without a solution to that problem, we are talking about economic stagnation – Europe becomes a tourist attraction.”

The first industrial revolution started in Britain in the eighteenth century with inventions such as the steam engine.  The second industrial revolution of the late nineteenth century got a boost from the expansion of electricity, while computers led the third industrial wave of the late twentieth century.

The Magnificent Seven U.S. tech companies have stormed ahead in the U.S. stock market in recent years, helped by their role in the development of artificial intelligence.

Populist parties are offering little practical to address these economic concerns, but are playing on people’s sense of the precariousness of their lives, according to Palan.

Laggardness in Europe is also nothing new, he adds.

“Similar events took place in the 1970s. The European car industry was buffeted by the Japanese, the Americans were pulling ahead, the Americans and the Japanese were competing with one another. The answer was the common market and the single market, the creation of European champions, European competitors – we are in the same situation now.”

It has become harder for Europe to pull together as one force since one of its biggest economies, Britain, left the European Union following the Brexit vote, although Britain and Europe continue to collaborate on geopolitical issues, Palan says.

“Brexit created an institutional gap. The fact that Britain is out weakened Europe and weakens Britain,” he said, though he added that: “it doesn’t mean that if Britain were part of Europe, they would find a solution.”

The mood is not all going one way. A pro-European Union party won elections in September in the eastern European country of Moldova. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni faced a general strike and major protests in September and October following her refusal to recognise the state of Palestine, in contrast to other EU countries such as France and Spain. Left-wing as well as right-wing parties are also popular in France.

However, Palan points out that the rhetoric of both left-wing and right-wing parties is often similar, as right-wing parties such as France’s National Rally and Reform UK also promote strong intervention by the state. British think tank Chatham House said in an October report, that the National Rally’s economic policies were “closer in tone to French Socialist icon Jean Jaurès than to the Iron Lady (former Conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher)”.

These right-wing populist groups are taking their lead from U.S. President Donald Trump, whose language comes straight from the Marxist playbook, according to Palan.

“The Deep State is a Marxist concept, the idea that there is a small cabal of people – the bourgeoisie – controlling the state, and that Trump represents the working class against the entrenched state,” said Palan, adding that Reform UK leader Nigel Farage “is also adopting Marxist language – it’s very confusing.”

Francesco Rigoli, a political psychologist at City St George’s, University of London, says Europe’s biggest economies, Britain, France and Germany, could all have populist parties in government in a few years.

“The level of polarisation remains extreme,” he told Yuvoice. “There’s a feeling that the traditional parties have disappointed, that they have not fulfilled expectations. There’s a feeling that Europe is in crisis.”