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

BRITAIN’S economy is in dire straits. New figures released by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which cannot be accused of anti-capitalist bias, estimate that the UK economy will shrink by 0.3 per cent this year, making it the worst-performing G7 economy.
This will have disastrous consequences for ordinary people already suffering from the worst cost-of-living crisis in decades amid soaring inflation and declining real wages.
That the Tory government’s savage austerity policies offer no way out of this crisis — indeed, are a major cause of Britain’s economic problems — is an issue that is well understood and debated within the labour movement.



