Fownhope’s Heart of Oak Society traces its roots to the age of friendly societies, when communities provided their own safety net. Its anniversary celebrations reveal a tradition still very much alive, says MARK SEDDON
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Musk’s provocations shouldn’t be laughed off
The trolling of our nation by Twitter’s clown prince points to very real weaknesses in the current regime as it cowers before Trump’s coming reign — it is time for Corbyn-era forces to unite and take on Starmer, writes ANDREW MURRAY
HIGH-TECH FAR-RIGHT: Elon Musk at Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party’s annual festival in Rome, December 2023
ANGUS REID explains the significance of Cuba’s egalitarian in letter and spirit Family Code and the pertinent lessons it holds for democracies anywhere in the world
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NICK WRIGHT considers how the isolation of Israel and a new film on the controversial Italian communist leader are creating new reference points for Italy’s left
CARLOS MARTINEZ says Cuba’s achievements in the face of a criminal blockade are startling, but the island’s future if the United States succeeds in crushing it looks bleak
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports that far-right MPs who mobbed the event organised by Hadash may have helped raise awareness of the brutality of the Israeli right
POLITICS as spectacle has started 2025 in fine form, with the world’s richest man demanding regime change in Britain while falling out with his erstwhile bestie Nigel Farage.
Elon Musk wishes to imprison Keir Starmer, among others, replacing Labour, it seems, with a government resting upon the far-right grifter Tommy Robinson — unavailable to serve — and the somewhat seedy businessman Reform MP Rupert Lowe, who is presently unwilling to.
The immediate issue animating Musk’s call for US intervention to liberate Britain from Starmerism likewise tends eccentric — a refusal to establish a national inquiry into the scandal of grooming gangs which abused thousands of girls in the recent past.
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Once derided by Farage as a ‘fraud,’ Jenrick has defected to Reform, bringing experience and political ruthlessness to the populist right — and raising the unsettling prospect of a Farage-led movement with a seasoned operative pulling the strings, says ANDREW MURRAY
As the PM and his chief of staff’s blunders have mounted up, ANDREW MURRAY wonders who among Labour’s diminished ‘soft left’ might make a bid for the leadership
LYNNE WALSH reports from the Morning Star’s Race, Sex and Class Liberation conference last weekend, which discussed the dangers of incipient fascism and the spiralling drive to war