Reform’s rise speaks to a deep crisis in Establishment parties – but relies on appealing to social and economic grievances the left should make its own, argues NICK WRIGHT
Banking on bigotry and the two-horse race
Starmer’s Labour is dog-whistling so loud it’s deafening, safe in the knowledge the minority communities being slighted by these affronts largely have nowhere else to turn. Remember these betrayals, writes ANDREW MURRAY

PERHAPS it is not surprising that the general election campaign has so far mainly been about racism.
There is no reason to think that Britain, simply because it has left the EU, is immune to the trends reflected in the elections to the EU parliament, which registered the growth of right and far-right forces.
Here, the two major parties are locked in an inane contest in which neither can actually articulate how they differ from the other. It is democracy degraded to slideshow presentations to win a management contract.
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Incredibly, US Republican states are systematically dismantling child labour protections, with children transformed back into the cheap, disposable workers of the Dickens era, reports ANDREW MURRAY

ANDREW MURRAY casts an eye over past upheavals and asks whether the left can find a fire escape before the world goes up in flames