ANDREW MURRAY surveys a quaking continent whose leaders have no idea how to respond to an openly contemptuous United States
The gathering storms: politics in an age of drivel and distraction
As deadly weather events spread death and destruction, ALAN SIMPSON argues that Labour’s first Budget has failed to address the converging crises of climate breakdown and democratic alienation that require transformative change
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AS all eyes focused on Labour’s first Budget in 14 (long) years, barely anyone saw fit to link it to events in Valencia, the Amazon or the heat dome over central Africa. Yet these are the bigger issues around which global politics, economics and national Budgets will increasingly revolve.
Droughts in South America and central Africa might seem too remote for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to be juggling with. But the images from Valencia ought to have intruded somewhere in her Treasury conversations.
More than a year’s worth of rainfall hit Valencia in eight hours. Torrents swept through the streets, turning them into impromptu scrap yards of displaced cars. Over 150 people have died. Dozens more are missing.
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Some hard political choices must be made in Trump’s post-truth era – starting by abandoning any illusions about the ‘special relationship’ and waking up to the need for bold policy-making on the climate, argues ALAN SIMPSON
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Centrist governments around the world face rejection by their electorates as neoliberalism fails to deliver the public prosperity it never promised – and the same fate awaits Labour unless it starts to deliver for those struggling to survive, says ALAN SIMPSON
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Undaunted by Big Oil success, ALAN SIMPSON looks at alternatives to lack of courage and imagination stifling the Labour government and it policies
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Following the wave of far-right violence, people came together across the land, demonstrating that we are so much better than the racists would have you believe and a better Britain can be built, writes ALAN SIMPSON
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Undaunted by Big Oil success, ALAN SIMPSON looks at alternatives to lack of courage and imagination stifling the Labour government and it policies
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Visionary leadership is needed to tackle the existential climate crisis, but Labour risks squandering any opportunity for transformative change by clinging to the neoliberal economic orthodoxy, writes ALAN SIMPSON
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When it comes to the water industry, we need to put the interests of society before those of speculators. ALAN SIMPSON has some ideas about how to bring about the change we need