While Italy’s communist tradition remains fragmented and politically marginal, France’s party is attempting to re-establish itself as an independent force rooted in working-class organisation, says NICK WRIGHT

NICK WRIGHT continues his series analysing the trends in European politics

The drive to strengthen European defence is reshaping relations between France, Germany, Italy and Britain, says NICK WRIGHT

The defence secretary’s resignation reveals not a split over principle but a dispute over pace of military spending, as Britain’s political Establishment unites behind deeper Nato commitments, argues NICK WRIGHT

NICK WRIGHT considers how the isolation of Israel and a new film on the controversial Italian communist leader are creating new reference points for Italy’s left

Western accounts portray the Stasi as an agent of repression, but behind the stereotype, many East German security officers saw themselves as defenders of an anti-fascist socialist project under constant attack from the West, argues NICK WRIGHT

A row over Trotskyist factions exposes competing visions of organisation inside Your Party and the wider left, argues NICK WRIGHT

Washington’s response to a downed jet shows a superpower still reaching for overwhelming force even as its wars repeatedly fail, says NICK WRIGHT

Italians reject controversial judiciary reforms in a referendum that boosts the left, reports NICK WRIGHT

Tens of thousands of students left their classrooms and took to the streets against conscription and rising military spending. NICK WRIGHT reports from Berlin

With our ruling class struggling to secure a new vehicle for power and the disintegration of the traditional party system, a volatile new chapter is opening, sharpened by war, austerity and electoral distortion, argues NICK WRIGHT

As Labour plans a centralised National Police Service, the resignation of a chief constable over the Maccabi football ban reveals how policing, technology and narrative management converge when public order and class power are at stake, says NICK WRIGHT