Danni Perry’s flag display at the Royal Opera House sparked 182 performers to sign a solidarity letter that cancelled the Tel Aviv Tosca production, while Leonardo DiCaprio invests in Tel Aviv hotels, reports LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
A perfect opportunity for Labour to develop bold new policies
The result in Batley and Spen ought to galvanise the party leadership to set out its vision for the future – but there are few signs this will happen any time soon, says IAN LAVERY MP
Keir Starmer with Kim Leadbeater in Clackheaton Park after she won the Batley and Spen by-election
YANA PETTICREW explains what’s behind the strike and how the entire sector rests on super-exploiting an unorganised workforce
STEPHEN ARNELL casts a critical eye over the sudden rash of challenges to the two-party system on both sides of the Atlantic, noting that today’s performative populist politics sadly lacks Roosevelt’s progressive ‘Bull Moose’ vision of the early 20th century
BILL KIDD MSP says increasing Britain’s nuclear arsenal at this time is dangerous and expensive folly
ROGER McKENZIE asks whether the US’s shift to targeting everyone at once will instil greater co-operation among rising powers
In the early hours of this Friday morning it was announced in a ‘shock’ result that Kim Leadbeater had done enough, and that Labour had held on to Batley & Spen.
Kim’s popular local appeal alongside an energetic campaign that was deeply rooted in the local community and omnipresent on the doorsteps thanks to an army of party activists was enough to hold – not win - a seat in that in 2017 backed Labour with a majority just shy of 9,000.
The result comes in the backdrop of an aggressive campaign resulting in thousands of votes, mainly assumed to be from Muslim communities disillusioned with the current direction of the Labour Party and feeling their vote has been taken for granted for too long, going to third parties.
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