The catastrophe unfolding in Gaza – where Palestinians are freezing to death in tents – is not a natural disaster but a calculated outcome of Israel’s ongoing blockade, aid restrictions and continued violence, argues CLAUDIA WEBBE
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Teaching the watchdog not to bark
SOLOMON HUGHES reveals why Labour is attempting to build its own spending review body: the existing one might not like its love affair with the outsourcing giants who provide terrible value for public money
Evidence suggests Lammy’s proposals would come at a high cost: reduced fairness, diminished trust and greater racial inequality in the criminal justice system, argue TARA LAI QUINLAN and KATHARINA KARCHER
After years of austerity and denial under a new Reform UK council, a failing Send service was pushed into the spotlight by staff, unions and parents — culminating in a £1.3m funding boost and a 50% increase in front-line workers. MARTIN PORTER explains
Trump’s escalation against Venezuela is about more than oil, it is about regaining control over the ‘natural’ zone of influence of the United States at a moment where its hegemony is slipping, argues VIJAY PRASHAD
Trade union leaderships have so far stopped short of the bold industrial action over Gaza seen in Italy and Greece. NATHAN HENNEBRY calls for a re-radicalising of the union movement and rebuilding class power as vital to turning solidarity into action
Held at a last-minute undisclosed venue amid fear of disruption, a Women’s Rights Network event brought together authors and activists, offering a day of debate on feminism’s past, present and future. JADE MIDDLETON reports
THIS march, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves announced a new key policy, an “office for value for money” (OVM) — what she called an “independent hit squad, with real powers to hold the government to account.”
But Labour has failed to highlight some key recent reports by the National Audit Office (NAO). The NAO is the nearest thing to Reeves’s proposed OVM, but I suspect Labour has not been grabbing some of their reports, because they independently come up with the wrong answer by showing the failure of outsourced public services.
Highlighting what she called billions of pounds of “wasteful government spending,” Reeves said her new OVM would “conduct spot checks,” “investigate value for money in procurement” and “publish findings, providing a powerful public check” on waste.
Reeves sold her plan as an improvement on the NAO, the government’s main spending watchdog. Reeves told Channel 4 News:
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Instead of responding to changed circumstances by adjusting policy, Reeves is using fiscal ‘rules’ as an excuse to force government departments to make even deeper cuts than she had already flagged, says CLAUDIA WEBBE
Behind a facade of flimsy restrictions, the man who was Tony Blair’s privatisation champion is back in an advisory role, despite the fact he already works for firms that will profit from the selling off of the NHS, writes SOLOMON HUGHES