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
Lives are being put at risk through the downskilling of the NHS
The government’s latest cost-cutting NHS manoeuvres are a risk to patient safety – they must be vigorously opposed, warns CLAUDIA WEBBE MP
General view of staff on a NHS hospital ward, January, 2023
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
THE British government is preparing to legislate for new “regulated” medical roles in the NHS that it claims will “improve patient safety”: “medical associates.” However, the government and the NHS admit that these roles are not qualified doctors and that they form a key part of the government’s “long-term plan” to increase the NHS workforce.
The new plan for these semi-qualified roles to be regulated by the General Medical Council will drive the supposedly “safe” “expansion of medical associate roles to support doctors and GPs,” amounting to a padding out of NHS numbers to allow costs to be driven down through a “downskilling” of the NHS workforce.
The absence of proper workforce planning since the Conservatives entered government in 2010 was highlighted by the King’s Fund earlier this year as a major cause of the struggles of the NHS, yet the Tories’ response to that now is to fill positions with people who are not as qualified as those the NHS has lost.
More from this author
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
