Secret consultation documents finally released after the Morning Star’s two-year freedom of information battle show the Home Office misrepresented public opinion, claiming support for policies that most respondents actually strongly criticised as dangerous and unfair, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
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
Our groundbreaking report reveals how private rail companies are bleeding millions from public coffers through exploitative leasing practices — but we have the solutions, writes Aslef Scottish organiser KEVIN LINDSAY
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
Reform’s rise speaks to a deep crisis in Establishment parties – but relies on appealing to social and economic grievances the left should make its own, argues NICK WRIGHT
This year’s Bristol Radical History Festival focused on the persistent threats of racism, xenophobia and, of course, our radical collective resistance to it across Ireland and Britain, reports LYNNE WALSH
A maverick’s self-inflicted snake bites could unlock breakthrough treatments – but they also reveal deeper tensions between noble scientific curiosity and cold corporate callousness, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
The FBU is demanding 52 weeks of full pay for women firefighters, highlighting the unique health risks they face — and the continuing need to recruit and retain more women if policies like this are still not in place, writes SEONA HART
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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The more Starmer’s government demonstrates its inability to offer real change, the more its chances of securing a second term diminish, warns MICK WHITLEY
Labour’s low-vote landslide was enabled by the far right and opens the door wider to fascism, argues CLAUDIA WEBBE
Communist Party leader ROBERT GRIFFITHS dissects the election results, looking at all of the political spectrum, from the hard right to the far left, and assesses the political landscape it reveals
So huge a majority on so small a vote points to the widening gulf between rulers and ruled and a deep crisis of bourgeois democracy, argues BEN CHACKO