Corbyn’s intervention exposes a corrupted system, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE
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The Starmer-Savile smear is indeed a smear
You don't need to be a Labour loyalist to say Starmer wasn't soft on sex crimes — but neither is it a rumour of murky, far-right origins: it's from the mainstream media, despite their current contrived outrage, explains SOLOMON HUGHES
Starmer was not directly involved in the decision not to prosecute Savile and led the DPP in a more or less conventional way — all the establishment organisations, including the DPP and the BBC, found it hard to pursue Savile, because they are biased towards the rich and powerful and against women, especially those with less money or social standing
In the second of a series of articles, Storming the Heavens author JENNY CLEGG introduces the key themes of her book on the Chinese revolution
Paul Holden’s The Fraud reveals how a network of donors, MPs and opaque organisations quietly organised to destroy Corbyn’s leadership and manufacture a new centre of power inside Labour, writes JOHN ELLISON
Systems of power enable, excuse and normalise abuse, while survivors are ignored and women’s exploitation is repackaged as commerce and choice, warns CHARLIE WEINBERG
By casting himself as Supreme Pontiff, Donald Trump summoned the ghosts of the church’s most depraved eras, says STEPHEN ARNELL
As assaults on transport staff rise and the Scottish Parliament heads for dissolution, promised legislation to protect rail workers has yet to materialise, says ANN HENDERSON
FRENCH NOVELIST George Perec wrote the novel A Void which doesn’t have a single letter “e” on any of its 290 pages. Gilbert Adair managed the fiendish task of translating it into English in 1995. Perec was a member of Oulipo, a loose collective of tricksters and the joke is a kind of extended prank, a deliberate piece of absurdity.
I raise A Void now because the extended absurdity of writing a novel without the letter “e” reminds me of a bizarre void inside British journalism. A Void is quite impressive and funny to read, but it is also sort of annoying, because all the characters keep saying things like “a thing I cannot pinpoint is missing from our linguistics” — and your mind keeps saying, “Yes! The letter E is missing! Will you just stop messing about and notice it!”
When it comes to journalism, what is missing is something equally basic: any description or acknowledgement of journalism itself. The media can look at politics going rotten but can never see the media’s role in it.
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