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

KEIR STARMER in part justified his warmongering over Ukraine by underlining that the 1945 Labour government was in 1949 one of the founding signatories of Nato.
Not welcomed by many on the left either then or now, it marked a significant moment in the cold war between the US and the USSR.
Although it was framed as a defensive alliance, it first came to life during the Korean war, one of a number of conflicts in the cold war that took place outside Europe.

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