From London’s holly-sellers to Engels’s flaming Christmas centrepiece, the plum pudding was more than festive fare in Victorian Britain, says KEITH FLETT
Latest editorial
The most powerful unelected figures in the land
Gavin Williamson should have remembered the National Security Secretariat serve the system, not each government - and Jeremy Corbyn would be wise to remember that too, says NICK WRIGHT
Sir Mark Sedwill
Once the bustling heart of Christian pilgrimage, Bethlehem now faces shuttered hotels, empty streets and a shrinking Christian community, while Israel’s assault on Gaza and the tightening grip of occupation destroy hopes of peace at the birthplace of Christ, writes Father GEOFF BOTTOMS
From a lockdown digital project to a vital tool for class solidarity, ROBERT POOLE and HENRY FOWLER reflect on half-a-decade of struggle
After years hidden away, Oldham’s memorial to six local volunteers who died fighting fascism in the Spanish civil war has been restored to public view, marking both a victory for campaigners and a renewed tribute to the town’s proud International Brigade heritage, says ROB HARGREAVES
The June 2025 attacks on Iran have heightened the risk of a wider war, exposed the fiction of a rules-based international order and left ordinary Iranians trapped between external aggression and internal repression, says the Committee for Defence of Iranian People’s Rights
While pretending to seek peace, Europe is heading toward a collision course with Russia – using security guarantees, troop deployments, expropriation and censorship as tools, writes SEVIM DAGDELEN
A WWI hero, renowned ornithologist, medical doctor, trade union organiser and founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain all rolled in one. MAT COWARD tells the story of a life so improbable it was once dismissed as fiction
GAVIN WILLIAMSON was chief whip, responsible for discipline, in the most fractious and disunited parliamentary Tory Party in living memory. He helped Theresa May become prime minister and called in the debt to be appointed defence secretary. Williamson then set about proving his inadequacy for the job with such a catalogue of maladroit gaffes and juvenile utterances as to evoke disbelief and hilarity among the military types nominally junior to him in rank and status.
Of course, Britain’s military and security establishment more or less runs itself conscious that ministers come and go while the defence of the imperial realm traditionally depends on the permanent caste of professionals to which they belong by birth or preference.
Where the arriviste Williamson came unstuck was in not taking account of the new importance the security apparatus enjoys.
Similar stories
Starmer sabotaged Labour with his second referendum campaign, mobilising a liberal backlash that sincerely felt progressive ideals were at stake — but the EU was then and is now an entity Britain should have nothing to do with, explains NICK WRIGHT
There is no doubt that Trump’s regime is a right-wing one, but the clash between the state apparatus and the national and local government is a good example of what any future left-wing formation will face here in Britain, writes NICK WRIGHT
KEITH BENNETT explains why, despite its present meagre economic outcomes, an honest and fruitful partnership with China is worth pursuing