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

COMMUNITIES Minister Robert Jenrick announced in the Sunday Telegraph in mid-January and subsequently in the House of Commons that he plans to make any changes to historic statues and monuments subject to planning laws.
The considerable number of statues and monuments that are already protected (mainly against property developers) are already subject to law.
The historian Dan Hicks tweeted that he doubted that statues which are not already covered would be found to be worthy of being so.

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