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

THE current Labour Party leadership has reached a new low in its backing for a siege of Gaza — quite against international law and UN policy — and the old-fashioned sabre-rattling of sending navy gunboats to support an Israeli government that is almost certainly better-armed than Britain.
The disgrace is not just in the support for Israel’s actions, but also the lack of opposition and dissent at the top in the Labour Party and the unions.
The international conventions that Labour is currently ignoring were the product of a post-1945 era where the framework for a new world order was laid out, including policies on refugees, acceptable behaviour in war, and the creation of the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

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