Preferable to Starmer he may be, but there is scant sign of a sharp political break in Burnham’s policies so far — while left challenges aren’t making much of a running either, finds ANDREW MURRAY. How can socialism be put back on the map?
THE real birthplace of Covid-19 was not the wet market of Wuhan or the bat caves of the hinterland, nor was it a test tube in a Chinese virology lab.
Covid-19 was born in the financial centres of London, Amsterdam, New York and Hong Kong.
Finance capital’s insatiable drive for infinite accumulation is also driving the ecological degradations that are causing the pandemics: the interminable expansion of fossil fuel production; the continuous expropriation of subsistence farmers in the global South and their displacement by corporate agribusiness and factory farming; the persistent deforestation and commodification of nature.
ROY WILKES takes issue with those on the left who argue immigration lowers wages — dividing resident and migrant workers only strengthens capitalist exploitation
Andy Burnham’s message of hope will defeat Reform if Labour delivers the New Deal for Working People in full, says JOANNE THOMAS
Former Labour MP LAURA SMITH makes the case for The Many slate in the elections to Your Party’s new executive
BEN CHACKO says in different ways, the centenary of the General Strike and that of Fidel Castro’s birth point to priority tasks for the British left in the coming year



