Since Ahmad al-Sharaa came to power in Syria, the Damascus government has been given carte blanche to use maximum force against any threat to its continued rule, writes VIJAY PRASHAD
Green Finance Institute: much ‘finance,’ little green
SOLOMON HUGHES reveals how one of the organisations shaping Labour’s investment plans was created by Tories and bankers, looking like a slightly green-flecked PFI vehicle instead of a body for proper investment
Rachel Reeves met Green Finance Institute chief executive Rhian-Mari Thomas at Davos this January; Thomas says she told Reeves to junk her existing £28 billion public investment plan and let her put Labour ‘in the room’ with the finance industry, resulting in the much smaller £7.3bn fund to work alongside the banks
Keir Starmer’s hiring Tim Allan from Tory-led Strand Partners is another illustration of Labour’s corporate-influence world where party differences matter less than business connections, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Britain’s proud asylum history, from sheltering the Kindertransport escaping Hitler to Basque children fleeing fascist Spain, required tireless campaigning against persistent opposition — and it’s up to all of us to do our part today, writes SABINA PRICE
The truth will out: we are here to unveil the full scale of the government’s complicity in genocide and to hold it to account for the monstrous bloodshed in Palestine, writes JEREMY CORBYN
As the Alliance of Sahel States and southern African nations advance pan-African goals, the African Union must listen and learn rather than parroting the Western line on these positive developments, writes ROGER McKENZIE
KEITH BENNETT reflects on witnessing the grand parade in Beijing marking the 80th anniversary of China’s Victory Day, which impressively showcased advanced military technology
WHAT is the Green Finance Institute, the organisation behind Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s National Wealth Fund plans? Turns out it is an un-transparent, bank-oriented company cooked up between then Tory chancellor Phillip Hammond and the City of London.
Reeves and Ed Miliband say that from April 2024, the Green Finance Institute gave “policy support on the Labour Party’s National Wealth Fund,” running the task force designing the fund, in a donation worth £99,000.
Green Finance Institute chief executive Rhian-Mari Thomas told the Guardian she personally persuaded Reeves to redesign her green investment plans, lobbying the future Chancellor at Davos this January.
Thomas, who spent 19 years as a Barclays banker, says she told Reeves to junk her existing £28 billion public investment plan and let her put Labour “in the room” with the finance industry, resulting in the much smaller £7.3bn fund to work alongside the banks.
An ex-banker persuading the future Chancellor to rewrite her policy, reducing public investment, at the corporate Glastonbury of Davos, sounds like Labour dancing to a City tune.
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Keir Starmer’s hiring Tim Allan from Tory-led Strand Partners is another illustration of Labour’s corporate-influence world where party differences matter less than business connections, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
MBDA’s Alabama factory makes components for Boeing’s GBU-39 bombs used to kill civilians in Gaza. Its profits flow through Stevenage to Paris — and it is one of the British government’s favourite firms, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
SOLOMON HUGHES asks whether Labour ‘engaging with decision-makers’ with scandalous records of fleecing the public is really in our interests
Labour’s new Treasury unit will ‘challenge unnecessary regulation’ by forcing nominally independent bodies like Ofwat to bend to business demands — exactly what Iain Anderson’s corporate clients wanted, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
