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
Truss wins Tory leadership, Charles appointed King — British democracy laid bare
In a nation of 67 million, only 80,000 Conservative Party member chose the next Prime Minister — still, that is 80,000 more than those who picked Charles III to be our head of state, writes KEITH FLETT
Charles shakes hands with Prime Minister Liz Truss during their first audience at Buckingham Palace, London, following the death of Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday. Picture date: Friday September 9, 2022.
The move against alleged PKK members that sparked outrage as a community centre in north London was raided last year has now come to trial, writes TONY BURKE, but in the meantime, the peace process abroad has changed the situation almost entirely
A new report points a way to overcome complacent framing of climate issues, ‘by sparking a wider public reckoning with climate realities,’ and reconnecting with working-class people. IAN SINCLAIR reports
We cannot understand today’s world without understanding the rise of China – and we cannot understand China without understanding how it was shaped by the second world war, writes JENNY CLEGG
NICK WRIGHT reports from Italy, where 80 cities saw Gaza strikes as unions paralysed transport and massive crowds clashed with police in Milan — but France is also kicking off, and Westminster, in a very different way, is facing a crisis of legitimacy too
Escalating anti-China rhetoric from the West has a clear purpose – to manufacture consent for the new cold war, and potentially a hot one, argues CARLOS MARTINEZ
LIZ TRUSS was elected as Tory leader and hence appointed Prime Minister after beating Rishi Sunak by 57 per cent to 43 per cent of the 141,000 votes cast. The turnout was 82 per cent (it was largely an e-ballot) meaning the Tory membership is currently 172,000.
The 80,000 votes Truss got was rather less than the 85,000 CWU members who have recently taken strike action over a 2 per cent pay offer. That vote easily passed the 50 per cent threshold of those entitled to vote which applies to trade unions, but not elsewhere. Truss got 47 per cent of the vote — so were it a union ballot, it would have been declared invalid, as the TUC noted.
Membership of political parties is not high in Britain with the exception of Labour. Here membership rose to over 500,000 under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership but had declined somewhat to 432,000 by December 2021. It may well now be lower still, but easily dwarfs Tory numbers.
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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
