While slashing welfare and public services, Labour’s spring statement delivers a bonanza for death-dealing bomb merchants. We now see the true and terrible face of austerity 2.0, writes MICHAEL BURKE
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Macron’s gamble blows up French politics
The snap election call has spectacularly backfired, with the right and centre furiously backstabbing itself into oblivion, and the left, from the communists to social democrats, quickly uniting into a New Popular Front, writes NICK WRIGHT
Detailing the deluge of delusion and dishonesty pushed by the pro-war camp, IAN SINCLAIR identifies four key tactics corporate journalists use to confuse audiences and suppress opposition to the proxy war in the east
From ‘moral duty’ to ‘military Keynesianism,’ Labour manipulates language to justify slashing welfare but pouring billions into warfare, condemning communities like Glasgow South West to deeper poverty, writes MATT KERR
With politicians dismissing constituents’ fears of global war, the peace movement must look beyond Parliament to prevent catastrophe, writes TOM MORRISON
The mass movement supporting Palestine represents potential political power that the left must now embrace as central to its strategy, writes HUGH LANNING, ahead of this Saturday’s Socialism or Barbarism day school in London
Health Secretary Wes Streeting taking £53k from Tory-linked recruiter and outsourcer Peter Hearn’s OPD Group is a great example of how Labour’s rich donors shape policies targeting the poor – not their wealth, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
MAT COWARD recalls the communist and pacifist aristocrat whose commitment made a difference in the Spanish civil war, the Blitz and WWII Europe
THIEVES’ argot for a safecracker is “a Peterman.” The word’s origins are contested: one version has it that the term derives from Scotland’s Peterhead prison from which the notorious safecracker Johnny Ramensky, alias Johnny Ramsey, escaped five times.
Another has its origins in the term saltpetre (potassium nitrate), the key ingredient in gunpowder. A more likely origin is in the French verb “peter” — to blow up, or more crudely, to fart.
President Emmanuel Macron is today a Peterman par excellence. His reckless decision to call a general election in the impossibly short time of two weeks leaves just a few days before the French people get to pass judgment on their political class.
More from this author
Xenophobic hysteria over the statistically insignificant number of small-boat crossings deliberately conceals how capitalism manipulates population flows for profit — if we can explain that, we’ll beat the right, argues NICK WRIGHT
NICK WRIGHT delicately unpicks the eloquent writings on art of an intellectual pessimist who wears his Marxism lightly
NICK WRIGHT examines how Farage’s party has attracted five distinct voter tribes with incompatible views on economics, immigration and state intervention — presenting both a challenge and opportunity for left organising
In the recent federal elections the far-right AfD was able to reach sections of the working class on issues over which the left is divided and unable to articulate a coherent position, a situation that is replicated in a number of other European countries, argues NICK WRIGHT
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The Melenchon-led NFP coalition now holds most Assembly seats, challenging the president’s anti-worker agenda — the far-right threat remains, but the path to progressive government is now open, writes DENNIS BROE
Can the conservative, centre and left of French politics work out a complex dance of candidates standing aside for each other to prevent an outright, far-right victory this Sunday? NICK WRIGHT assesses
Amid an enormously dynamic situation, can Le Pen’s National Rally be stopped in the forthcoming snap election and what role will the new left-wing anti-fascist pact play, asks KEVIN OVENDEN
