Trade unions need to step up and force a turn in the policies of the labour movement to effectively confront the far-right threat, argues NICK WRIGHT
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Cutting the welfare safety net in favour of a paternalistic pocket money system
After the latest Universal Credit disaster, Labour must win the argument on welfare, writes NATHAN AKEHURST
As the 90th anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish civil war is marked, Teesside campaigners will gather to remember the local men and women who stood against fascism, explains TONY FOX
Whatever differences exist among international sympathisers of the Bolivarian revolution about its current trajectory, they should unite against the imperialist power that is the source of an enforced retreat, argues ROGER D HARRIS
Washington’s inability to subjugate Iran is an example of how it is trying to preserve a regional order that no longer exists, argues RAMZY BAROUD
US financial instability is exposing the limits of a dollar-dominated global economy — and giving the Global South a historic chance to build an alternative, says MURAD QURESHI
Deprivation is a fundamental factor in criminal behaviour that must be addressed but, KENNY MacASKILL argues, there needs to a major rethink in sentencing to tackle overcrowding
IT’S difficult to describe hunger caused by an admin error. Little says more about the casual brutality of Britain’s ripped safety net than people being left with empty cupboards because someone fed the wrong data in.
I became used to such admin errors early on. Labour in power was hardly perfect on poor relief (it cut support for single parents like mine within a year of coming to office). But those errors could usually be fixed; a few heated phone calls, several hours queuing in a grey office, a trudge to another building, and something, if meagre, would materialise.
This time we are talking about people being abandoned for six weeks. For reasons from bad planning to political misjudgement to blind indifference, the Universal Credit rollout has been an unmitigated disaster throughout.
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As a proportion of GDP the total welfare bill is lower than it was 15 years ago. The claim that it is spiralling out of control is mythmaking, argues DIANE ABBOTT