The prospect of the Democratic Socialists of America member’s victory in the mayoral race has terrified billionaires and outraged the centrist liberal Establishment by showing that listening to voters about class issues works, writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
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Lib Dems: building themselves up for another fall?
The original centrist party's rampant opportunism has seen it swell its parliamentary ranks - but letting ex-Tories in might be as bad for its health as the ill-judged Con-Dem alliance of 2010, warns SOLOMON HUGHES
Liberal Democrat MPs (left to right) Sir Ed Davey, Jane Dodds, Chuka Umunna, Luciana Berger, Sam Gyimah, Angela Smith, Sarah Wollaston and Phillip Lee
Sixty Red-Green seats in a hung parliament could force Labour to choose between the death of centrism or accommodation with the left — but only if enough of us join the Greens by July 31 and support Zack Polanski’s leadership, writes JAMES MEADWAY
For the first time in years, the dominant voice within Chile’s official left comes not from neoliberal centrists but from the world of labour, writes LEONEL POBLETE CODUTTI
200 years since the first dinosaur was described and 25 after its record-breaking predecessor, the BBC has brought back Walking with Dinosaurs. BEN CHACKO assesses what works and what doesn’t
Just as the Chilcot inquiry eventually exposed government failings over the Iraq war, a full independent investigation into British complicity in Israeli war crimes has become inevitable — despite official obstruction, writes JEREMY CORBYN MP
The Congolese independence leader’s uncompromising speech about 80 years of European colonial brutality and injustice went round the world in 1960, and within months, he had been executed by Belgian and CIA-backed forces, writes KEITH BARLOW
WHILE Change UK crash and burn, the other centrist party, the Lib Dems, are making a recovery. But there are tensions and contradictions.
The coalition with the Conservatives gave some Lib Dems the ministerial posts they craved, but voters hated it — so the Lib Dems crashed from 57 to eight MPs. They were close to destruction as a party.
However, the Lib Dems have managed to recover a bit, largely by distancing themselves from the Tories, and using their opposition to Brexit to look like a principled, anti-Tory party. They have also grown in Parliament by recruiting ex-Tory MPs on the run from Boris Johnson’s no-deal Brexit and ex-Labour MPs fleeing Corbynism.
Some of these new recruits bring an extra seat in Parliament and some media attention. But they also bring the Lib Dems too close to more obviously reactionary views. The arrival of Thatcherite Tory MP Sam Gyimah and anti-migrant Philip Lee with his iffy views on HIV have caused the Lib Dem grassroots consternation.
Oddly enough, though, at the fringe meeting I attended at the conference, Tory-turned Lib Dem MP Sarah Wollaston sounded more left wing than ex-Labour MP Chuka Umunna.
Wollaston argued that Brexit campaigners increased their vote by “mobilising grievances” about economic stagnation. People are angry because after the 2008 financial crisis “no-one suffered except the poorest. No one went to jail.”
By contrast Chuka addressed the same issue by praising the City, albeit calling for some changes. Chuka said we must “reform our financial services sector — it’s such an important industry. And I’m not just saying that because I am running for the MP’s seat in City & Westminster. We must also have an end to rent-seeking behaviour, as it were.”
Chuka also argued that parties couldn’t just offer polices, they had to meet people’s “values” and “cultural identities.” To succeed parties must “put reform capitalism in an emotional envelope.” It’s a point with some truth. Unfortunately for the Lib Dems, Chuka Umunna’s own emotions always tend to love and praise big money, which will ultimately hurt the Lib Dems’ attempt to rebuild their popularity.
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