As Colombia approaches presidential elections next year, the US decision to decertify the country in the war on drugs plays into the hands of its allies on the political right, writes NICK MacWILLIAM

DURING the summer recess, the Tories have run a series of weekly campaigns on issues like asylum-seekers and crime — all have ended up causing at least as many problems for the Tories as they have for the opposition.
The Tories remain around 20 per cent behind Labour in the polls and are badly split.
Nadine Dorries’s resignation letter to Rishi Sunak was partly farcical, but partly sharp in pointing to numerous Tory policy failures.

In 1981, towering figure for the British left Tony Benn came a whisker away from victory, laying the way for a wave of left-wing Labour Party members, MPs and activism — all traces of which are now almost entirely purged by Starmer, writes KEITH FLETT

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

KEITH FLETT revisits debates about the name and structure of proposed working-class parties in the past

The summer saw the co-founders of modern communism travelling from Ramsgate to Neuenahr to Scotland in search of good weather, good health and good newspapers in the reading rooms, writes KEITH FLETT