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

AS USUAL at this time of year, the headlines are full of the so-called “winter crisis” in the NHS, with talk of “pressures” and “demand” recited almost unchallenged as the cause of the disaster.
But it is vital to be clear that the NHS is not merely collapsing, it is in a state of induced collapse. When the Conservative government came into power in 2010, a healthy NHS quickly went into such decline that what were at first regular “winter crises” became year-round crisis and then collapse.
Public satisfaction with our health service went into freefall, from a record high of over 70 per cent in 2010 to the current day reality of 36 per cent between 2020 and 2021 and arguably even far less now.

CLAUDIA WEBBE argues that Labour gains nothing from its adoption of right-wing stances on immigration, and seems instead to be deliberately paving the way for the far right to become an established force in British politics, as it has already in Europe

The Met Police arrested a staggering 890 people, many elderly, disabled, and even blind in a single demonstration — all to back up the government’s unhinged campaign against non-violent civil disobedience at the behest of Israel, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE

CLAUDIA WEBBE says a UN agency’s finding that Gaza’s famine, killing up to 400 people a day, is entirely man-made must prompt a renewed revolt against our government’s complicity in this horror

Starmer’s decision to suspend Diane Abbott yet again demonstrates a determination to maintain and propagate a hierarchy of racism, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE