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
Starmer’s Labour: The UK Establishment’s Supernova
by Radhika Desai, Alan Freeman and Carlos Martinez
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer poses for a photograph with the new intake of Scottish Labour MPs outside no 10 Downing Street, London, July 9, 2024
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
SPEAKING from 10 Downing Street, newly elected Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that the country had voted “decisively for change” and “for national renewal and a return of politics to public service.” Neither claim could be further from the truth.
Never has a government with so large a majority been elected less “decisively.” No claim to bring about change has rung hollower, though both governing parties have repeatedly made such claims to dissimulate the continuity of their common commitment to unpopular neoliberal policies.
Starmer’s “responsible” manifesto promised very little to working people, while showering generous subsidies, low taxes, lucrative contacts and permissive deregulation on big corporations and the rich, both British and foreign. Promises of increased social spending are predicated on growth that is unlikely if neoliberalism prevails, and such social spending as is undertaken will involve contracting services out to greedy big corporations, as Wes Streeting, the new Health Secretary, has already indicated.
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With Reform UK surging and Labour determined not to offer anything different from the status quo, a clear opportunity opens for the left, argues CLAUDIA WEBBE