Labour prospects in May elections may be irrevocably damaged by Birmingham Council’s costly refusal to settle the year-long dispute, warns STEVE WRIGHT
THE latest offensive by Keir Starmer and those around him to marginalise the left in the Labour Party has captured media headlines, and of course, the full approval of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Times.
Starmer, whose grasp of the dynamics of capitalism does not appear to be significant, most likely does not understand that it is the market system itself that creates the material conditions for a political left, seeking to focus ways of changing it. A left politics cannot simply be purged out of existence.
How that presents itself politically can vary, but we are coming up to the anniversary of the events that led to the formation of the first ever minority Labour government on January 22 1924.
While Hardie, MacDonald and Wilson faced down war pressure from their own Establishment, today’s leadership appears to have forgotten that opposing imperial adventures has historically defined Labour’s moral authority, writes KEITH FLETT
STEPHEN ARNELL examines whether Starmer is a canny strategist playing a longer game or heading for MacDonald’s Great Betrayal, tracing parallels between today’s rightward drift and the 1931 crisis
KEITH FLETT traces how the ‘world’s most successful political party’ has imploded since Thatcher’s fall, from nine leaders in 30 years to losing all 16 English councils, with Reform UK symbolically capturing Peel’s birthplace, Tamworth — but the beast is not dead yet



