The British outsourcing giant quietly deleted mention of training US immigration agents after killings in Minneapolis intensified scrutiny of its controversial contracts. SOLOMON HUGHES reports
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What’s the point of a new centrist party?
More plotting is afoot – but to what end, wonders CONRAD LANDIN
Jonathan Powell and JK Rowling
Bezalel Smotrich’s measures to extend Israeli property law into the West Bank are a continuation of a decades-long project to dispossess Palestinians and preclude statehood, argues HUGH LANNING
By Henry Fowler, co-founder of Strike Map
By signing strategic defence agreements with Ukraine, the German government has reached a new dimension of war involvement, says SEVIM DAGDELEN
Born from exclusion and resistance, black British art has carved out creative space to tell untold stories and challenge racism, says ROGER McKENZIE
Your Party’s new membership rules pose a deeper question about socialist organisation: should a party lead the working class, or be led by it, says CLAUDIA WEBBE
THE Countdown has begun. Rachel Riley, who replaced Carol Vorderman on the BBC puzzle show in 2009, was said to be in secret talks last week with Harry Potter author JK Rowling and Jonathan Powell, who served as Tony Blair’s chief of staff in No 10, on the prospects of a new centrist party.
It would be a modelled on Angela Merkel’s CDU, the Sun’s Steve Hawkes suggested. But given the unlikely prospect of Chris Leslie and Chuka Umunna understanding a German political tradition, this probably stands not for Christian Democratic Union — but Centrist Dads Unlimited.
The plotters met at the offices of Rowling’s agent Neil Blair, the Mail on Sunday reported, to develop plans “to launch a breakaway Labour Party within weeks.” So described not because of any connection to organised labour — but because the small number of MPs sucked in are all likely to be disaffected rightwingers of the Parliamentary Labour Party.
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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
The fallout from the Kneecap and Bob Vylan performances at Glastonbury raises questions about the suitability of senior BBC management for their roles, says STEPHEN ARNELL
STEPHEN ARNELL examines whether Starmer is a canny strategist playing a longer game or heading for MacDonald’s Great Betrayal, tracing parallels between today’s rightward drift and the 1931 crisis
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