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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 Sir Keir Starmer and Chancellor of the Excheq
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…
The arrest of the Cato Street Conspirators
Features / 4 February 2025
4 February 2025
The legacy of an 1820 conspiracy in revenge for Peterloo resonates down the ages, argues KEITH FLETT
Rachel Reeves
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
9 - Corbyn mass support
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
A Marx and Engles statue covered in snow
Features / 18 December 2024
18 December 2024
Modern Christmas as we know it, with its trees, dinner menu, cards and time off from work, only dates back to the early days of modern socialism as we know it, writes KEITH FLETT, checking in on Marx, Engels and the Chartists in the 1800s
TRULY MASSIVE: The great Chartist meeting on Kennington Comm
Features / 4 December 2024
4 December 2024
Forget Farage and the recent daft demands for a new election against Labour: the greatest petition Britain has ever known gathered millions of names demanding the right to vote — and it didn’t work either, writes KEITH FLETT
9restoration
Features / 19 November 2024
19 November 2024
KEITH FLETT considers how the return of the monarchy after Cromwell offers lessons for a left facing the return of Donald Trump, showing that radical traditions endure despite reactionary victories
Harold Wilson, Tony Blair and Keir Starmer
Features / 15 October 2024
15 October 2024
KEITH FLETT reflects on the 1964 and 1974 election victories, arguing that despite years in power, Labour failed to fundamentally reshape society in the way Thatcher later would — a pattern Blair and now Starmer would follow
Sidney Webb
History / 30 September 2024
30 September 2024
The words composed by Sidney Webb: ‘To organise and maintain in Parliament and in the country a Political Labour Party’ were a crucial landmark in Labour’s journey to becoming a membership-based electoral presence, writes KEITH FLETT