Skip to main content
Keith Flett
Former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn speaking at the People's Assembly Against Austerity protest in central London, June 7, 2025
Labour’s loss / 12 June 2025
12 June 2025

10 years ago this month, Corbyn saved Labour from its right-wing problem, and then the party machine turned on him. But all is not lost yet for the left, says KEITH FLETT

WINNING OVER THE WORKING CLASS? Margaret Thatcher (left) personally sells off a London council house in her bid to undermine the welfare state and woo Labour voters via the 1980 Housing Act and so-called ‘right to buy’ for tenants
Features / 26 May 2025
26 May 2025

Research shows Farage mainly gets rebel voters from the Tory base and Labour loses voters to the Greens and Lib Dems — but this doesn’t mean the danger from the right isn’t real, explains historian KEITH FLETT

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch at their local election campaign launch at The Curzon Centre in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, March 20, 2025
Features / 14 May 2025
14 May 2025

KEITH FLETT traces how the ‘world’s most successful political party’ has imploded since Thatcher’s fall, from nine leaders in 30 years to losing all 16 English councils, with Reform UK symbolically capturing Peel’s birthplace, Tamworth — but the beast is not dead yet

STILL MARCHING: A May Day demo makes its way through London, 1973
Features / 1 May 2025
1 May 2025

KEITH FLETT revisits the 1978 origins of Britain’s May Day bank holiday — from Michael Foot’s triumph to Thatcher’s reluctant acceptance — as Starmer’s government dodges calls to expand our working-class celebrations

Features / 14 April 2025
14 April 2025
From bemoaning London’s ‘cockneys’ invading seaside towns to negotiating holiday rents, the founders of scientific socialism maintained a wry detachment from Victorian Easter customs while using the break for health and politics, writes KEITH FLETT
TURNING POINT: The anti-cuts plan put forward by Tony Benn (
Features / 31 March 2025
31 March 2025
Facing economic turmoil, Jim Callaghan’s government rejected Tony Benn’s alternative economic strategy in favour of cuts that paved the way for Thatcherism — and the cuts-loving Labour of the present era, writes KEITH FLETT
Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Chancellor of the Exchequer
Features / 17 March 2025
17 March 2025
Starmer’s slash-and-burn approach to disability benefits represents a fundamental break with Labour’s founding mission to challenge the idle rich rather than punish the vulnerable poor, argues KEITH FLETT
Leaders of the Labour Representation Committee in 1906. From
Features / 4 March 2025
4 March 2025
The formation of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900 marked the beginning of interconnected and contested strategies — parliamentary and industrial — seeking ways to advance working-class interests, writes KEITH FLETT
EVEN FURTHER RIGHT: Margaret Thatcher
meets the press outsid
Features / 16 February 2025
16 February 2025
KEITH FLETT looks back 50 years to when the Iron Lady was elected Tory leader…
A cartoon depiction of the arrest of the Cato Street Conspir
Features / 4 February 2025
4 February 2025
The legacy of an 1820 conspiracy in revenge for Peterloo resonates down the ages, argues KEITH FLETT
Features / 23 January 2025
23 January 2025
Britain’s first woman Chancellor delivers the same old fudge, as Labour’s commitment to economic orthodoxy, seen throughout its history, always betrays working people, writes KEITH FLETT
YESTERDAY’S HOPE: Crowds outside the 2017 leaders debate
Features / 6 January 2025
6 January 2025
Every few years, it seems like the ‘right time’ to build a new left party — but what are the right conditions, asks socialist historian KEITH FLETT, looking back at the last two centuries and the insights of Ralph Miliband and EP Thompson