Nearly two decades after leaving office, the former PM is still trumpeting the same futile militarism and failed free market dogmas. The question naturally arises: why does anyone still listen to him, says ANDREW MURRAY
Latest editorial
Streeting will follow Labour’s well-trodden path
LESLIE HUCKFIELD explains how the roots of the shadow health secretary’s affection for the private health sector can be traced back to Patricia Hewitt and her New Labour heyday
Labour shadow health secretary Wes Streeting in an ambulance, during a visit to the London Ambulance Station in Waterloo, central London, December 14, 2023
Very modest growth in membership serves to underline the need for a change of recruiting strategies, posits NIGEL FLANAGAN
DIANE ABBOTT debunks claims made politicians drumming up support for an enhanced militarisation of the British economy
The Morning Star’s AGM tour comes at a critical moment for both the British left and the newspaper itself, as it battles political fragmentation and media industry upheaval. Editor BEN CHACKO issues a clarion call to readers to play their part in the coming period
The growing argument that welfare must be sacrificed for ‘security’ is built on nothing but myth, argues MICHAEL BURKE
Esmond Romilly horrified Britain’s Establishment by turning from privileged schoolboy to anti-fascist fighter, writes MAT COWARD
HISTORY shows that the meaningful and lasting components of neoliberalism always come from the left.
Though political history will hardly rank Wes Streeting’s proposed dismemberment of the NHS alongside Francois Mitterand’s abandonment of his 1981 Union de la Gauche, Bob Hawke’s 1983 Prices and Incomes Accord with trade unions in Australia, Clinton’s 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act or Gerhard Schroeder’s 2003 Hartz IV reforms in Germany, for British politics Streeting’s ambitions go further than Tony Blair’s 1995 attack on Clause Four.
As much as currently possible, this piece seeks to provide a political Ordnance Survey map of how he seeks to overcome its contours.
Similar stories
Years of underfunding are eroding Scotland’s local services and deepening inequality in communities, says VINCE MILLS
In the second part of her critique of Wes Streeting’s TenYear Plan for Health, HELEN MERCER looks at the central planks of this privatisation blueprint
Martin Taylor, the hedge-fund multimillionaire who has poured millions into pushing Labour rightwards, helped finance Lucy Powell’s supposedly dissenting campaign — suggesting her victory was not the ‘soft-left’ rebellion some have claimed, says SOLOMON HUGHES
DAVID MATTHEWS looks at what a collective future for welfare might have in store for us