The National Education Union general secretary speaks to Ben Chacko on growing calls to protect children from a toxic online culture
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Let’s work towards a new dawn for localism
We can draw inspiration from Lambeth, Liverpool and Clay Cross in the battle against local government cuts, says CHRIS WILLIAMSON
Clay Cross councillors walk out of court in 1975 where they appeared over a creditors' petition in bankruptcy for their refusal to implement the Housing Finance Act
While Iranians take to the streets en masse to protest sky-high inflation, Trump and Netanyahu are threatening military intervention. The Iranian population is trapped between a repressive regime, a suffocating economic war from the outside, and a history of dark alliances, argues MARC VANDEPITTE
Unison Scotland’s BRENDA AITCHISON says her union won’t tolerate further cuts to public services
The Danish Communist Party’s Lotte Rortoft-Madsen assesses the fallout from US threats to annex the huge Arctic island
Trump threatens war and punitive tariffs to recapture Iranian resources – just as in 1953, when the CIA overthrew Mossadegh and US corporations immediately seized 40% of the oil, says SEVIM DAGDELEN
Once derided by Farage as a ‘fraud,’ Jenrick has defected to Reform, bringing experience and political ruthlessness to the populist right — and raising the unsettling prospect of a Farage-led movement with a seasoned operative pulling the strings, says ANDREW MURRAY
THE Uruguayan literary giant of the Latin American left, the late Eduardo Galeano, once said: “History never really says goodbye. History says see you later.”
Galeano’s maxim seems particularly apposite in terms of local government cuts today. Demands are growing for Labour local authorities to rediscover municipal socialism to resist the relentless Tory cuts that have continued every year since 2010.
The New Labour era reduced councils to mere delivery arms of central government. Local authorities became obsessed with a tick-box culture that resulted from the plethora of indicators dreamed up by Whitehall whiz kids. Then an army of dubious inspection regimes was used to beat local authorities into submission.
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Holding office in local government is a poisoned chalice for a party that bases its electoral appeal around issues where it has no power whatsoever, argues NICK WRIGHT
With turnout plummeting and faith in Parliament collapsing, BERT SCHOUWENBURG explains how radical local government reform — including devolved taxation and removal of party politics from town halls — could restore power to communities currently ignored by profit-obsessed MPs
Based on his experience of Haringey Council Councillor MARK BLAKE believes only a radical policy rethink will reconnect councils with the alienated constituencies they are supposed to serve