In the wake of his recent humanitarian visit to Cuba, RICHARD BURGON points to the now urgent need to defend the island’s political sovereignty and its right to self-determination
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‘The British media class has often become part of the official machinery of deception’
PETER OBORNE talks to Sweta Choudhury about what prompted and informed his new book The Assault on Truth
A VERY BRITISH TRADITION: A protest against The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill outside Brighton Police Station, last Saturday
Thousands of jobs are at risk across higher education, yet government funding appears only when universities can be linked to military objectives, says JO GRADY, in the run-up to the Stop the War International Conference this Saturday
The Wye, Usk, Arrow and Lugg were once treasured for their clean waters – today, pollution and corporate excess are fuelling demands for a return to public ownership, says MARK SEDDON
The new Employment Rights Act is a step forward, but restoring collective bargaining and union power remains essential to tackling insecurity, outsourcing and low pay, says PAUL WHITEHOUSE
Rising support for Farage’s party reflects Labour’s failure to defend working-class living standards or offer a credible alternative to neoliberal decline, says JOSEPH MILLS
Trade unionists are mobilising to support Cuban workers and public services, amid escalating US pressure on the socialist island. RONAN OGILVY explains
IN YOUR previous book, The Rise of Political Lying, you catalogued the distortions of the Blair era. Your new book The Assault on Truth provides a detailed account of Boris Johnson’s political chicanery. So what is different about Johnson and Donald Trump’s methodology of deceit in comparison to that of Tony Blair and George Bush?
With Johnson and indeed Trump, it’s different and in a way more frightening because the traditional conservative philosophers tended to stress the importance of truth telling, rule of law, due process, etc. And that is because they are less convinced of the possibility of the great schemes of improvement. They believe that they can only affect small things.
What is really alarming about Johnson and Trump’s lying and also contempt for due process and attack on great institutions even is it that it comes from the right and not the left. And that means it is entirely divorced from any kind of morality. This is not to defend Blair’s lying.
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