A new generation of right-wing politicians have shifted from promoting deregulation to championing anti-migrant politics warns SOLOMON HUGHES
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Labour’s choice: Following opinion or shaping it
The party has a duty to expose right-wing lies about claimants rather than pandering to them, believes IAN SINCLAIR
by the Greater Manchester Workers’ and Tenants’ Association
The US relationship with Israel has evolved into a strategic liability, argues RAMZY BAROUD
A champion motorcyclist, trade union organiser and communist, Clem Beckett went from Britain’s speedway tracks to the battlefields of Spain, where he gave his life resisting Franco’s forces at Jarama. GEOFF BOTTOMS pays tribute to this remarkable anti-fascist
The greatest threat to democracy may no longer come from political parties but from unelected tech oligarchs like Peter Thiel and his powerful Silicon Valley network, argues JOHN GREEN
Claiming to ease a fertiliser shortage, the Trump administration has suspended tariffs on Moroccan phosphate imports – deepening US support for the Morocco’s control over Sahrawi territory, writes LUKE ROTELLO
SPEAKING about the government’s proposed benefit cuts on the BBC Sunday Politics show last month, the interim Labour Party leader Harriet Harman announced: “We won’t oppose the Welfare Bill, we won’t oppose the household benefit cap — for example, what they brought forward in relation to restricting benefits and tax credits for people with three or more children.”
Why was the main — supposedly left-wing — opposition party refusing to oppose the policies of a hard-right Tory government? Harman explained: “What we’ve got to do is listen to what people around the country said to us and recognise that we didn’t get elected again.”
As it happens, 48 Labour MPs defied their party’s three-line whip on the Welfare Bill and opposed the government’s plans to slash benefits from the poorest in society. Of the four Labour leadership hopefuls, Liz Kendall, Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper all followed Harman’s lead and abstained on the proposed Bill, while Jeremy Corbyn outright opposed it.
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Waiting for the grander vision to emerge
Despite the screeching from the right-wing media, Burnham’s speech chimed with the public mood - and socialists should take advantage, says Morning Star editor BEN CHACKO
Who you ask and how you ask matter, as does why you are asking — the history of opinion polls shows they are as much about creating opinions as they are about recording them, writes socialist historian KEITH FLETT
Every Starmer boast about removing asylum-seekers probably wins Reform another seat while Labour loses more voters to Lib Dems, Greens and nationalists than to the far right — the disaster facing Labour is the leadership’s fault, writes DIANE ABBOTT MP