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Solomon Hughes
8 - Akshata Murty
Features / 11 April 2025
11 April 2025
Why is the Labour government so addicted to giving government jobs to Tories when it spent so long trying to oust them? In the hope the favour is returned the next time the Tories return to power, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
HELD IN CONTEMPT: Elbit has faced a long campaign of sabotag
Features / 4 April 2025
4 April 2025
Israel’s number one death dealer supplying the IDF in its murderous campaigns against the Palestinians is now actively wining and dining our military top brass, looking to flog its blood-soaked wares, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
DON’T BLAME CLAIMANTS: People take part in a protest outsi
Features / 28 March 2025
28 March 2025
Health Secretary Wes Streeting taking £53k from Tory-linked recruiter and outsourcer Peter Hearn’s OPD Group is a great example of how Labour’s rich donors shape policies targeting the poor – not their wealth, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
BLUE’S WHO? Maurice Glasman (left), who founded Blue Labou
Features / 21 March 2025
21 March 2025
A new book shows the group’s close links to Labour Together, which hoodwinked the party membership into voting for Starmer on fake left promises. SOLOMON HUGHES attempts to get some answers about what ‘Blue Labour’ actually stands for
clinic
Features / 13 March 2025
13 March 2025
Despite using female spokespeople for its campaigns against clinic buffer zones, ADF UK’s board consists entirely of men, with 80 per cent living outside Britain and most funding from its US parent, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
PM+KS
Features / 7 March 2025
7 March 2025
You’ll never guess why a quick peace in Ukraine might be in the ambassador to Washington’s interests, writes SOLOMON HUGHES. Actually, of course you will – he stands to make a lot of money from his business links to Russia
a teacher and students in a classroom
Features / 20 February 2025
20 February 2025
SOLOMON HUGHES probes the finances of a phoney ‘charity’ pushing the free schools and academies agenda
cartoon
Features / 13 February 2025
13 February 2025
What’s behind the sudden wave of centrist ‘understanding’ about the real nature of Starmerism and its deep unpopularity? SOLOMON HUGHES reckons he knows the reasons for this apparent epiphany
07/06/24 of Taylor Swift performing on stage during her Eras
Features / 7 February 2025
7 February 2025
They’re the problem it’s them: SOLOMON HUGHES on the freeloading flunkies of the Labour Party hoovering up VIP tickets to musical and sporting events
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves during a visit to
Features / 31 January 2025
31 January 2025
SOLOMON HUGHES examines how Labour has gone from blaming Tory deregulation for our economic woes to betting the nation's future on more of it
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer speaks to guests as he hosts
Features / 24 January 2025
24 January 2025
SOLOMON HUGHES reports on how a mega-wealthy hedge fund manager is dishing out cash to a ‘cringe’ Labour Party mediocrity with contempt for the voters
8 -- Elon v Starmer
Features / 17 January 2025
17 January 2025
By spreading race-based conspiracy theories, the billionaire tycoon turned right-wing provocateur has been seriously undermining the case against those who really did let victims of the grooming gangs down, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Starmer
Features / 2 January 2025
2 January 2025
Supposedly top journalists and commentators are suddenly reversing their earlier proclamations that our Labour PM is terrific, and are now saying he’s crap. SOLOMON HUGHES has a shrewd idea why
Alan Milburn speaks at the first national conference of the
Features / 20 December 2024
20 December 2024
Behind a facade of flimsy restrictions, the man who was Tony Blair’s privatisation champion is back in an advisory role, despite the fact he already works for firms that will profit from the selling off of the NHS, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
ANNOYING YET OMNIPRESENT: The podcasting left must find ways
Features / 6 December 2024
6 December 2024
Despite mainstream political podcasts drowning in centrist drivel, Labour Left Podcast offers an authentic grassroots perspective from decades of working-class struggle and resistance, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
CAUGHT OUT AGAIN:  The MP for Birmingham  Yardley can’t re
Features / 4 December 2024
4 December 2024
Despite promises to clean up her act after previous violations, Home Office minister waited five months to declare a luxury Chelsea flower show dinner with Lloyds Bank, as Labour’s love of freebies continues, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
SITTING PRETTY: (Left to right) Baroness Liddell, Claire Kob
Features / 29 November 2024
29 November 2024
Let’s take a closer look at the sprawling network of former ministers, political insiders and officials who make money from the firms responsible for soldiers’ squalid accommodation, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
BL
Features / 22 November 2024
22 November 2024
SOLOMON HUGHES reveals how one of the leading lobbyists for new technology set to hoover up billions in subsidies is already embroiled in a privatisation scandal that has been described as ‘disastrous for taxpayers’
10 - retail
Features / 8 November 2024
8 November 2024
Our homegrown literary scene seems stuck in a bit of a middle-class bubble with a key sector deeply unrepresented in the stories it tells: retail workers. Ireland and the US do much better, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
JL+JC
Features / 24 October 2024
24 October 2024
By hiring a former TikTok PR man as its new head of comms, Labour shows that corporate wheeling and dealing rather than principled politics will be the party’s priority, says SOLOMON HUGHES
RR
Features / 18 October 2024
18 October 2024
Why is Labour so excited about unproven and untested schemes to burn fossil fuels while radically reducing CO₂ emissions? Just follow BP, Drax and Hynet’s money, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds leaving Downi
Features / 11 October 2024
11 October 2024
Jonathan Reynolds’ appearance at a Starling Bank-sponsored event speaks volumes about Labour’s attitude to financial regulation, as the bank faces criticism over Covid loan fraud and money laundering failures, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Peter Sellers (left) as Dr Strangelove from Stanley Kubrick'
Features / 4 October 2024
4 October 2024
SOLOMON HUGHES looks at the sorry career of Brett McGurk
A Serco prison van arriving at the Central Criminal Court, b
Features / 27 September 2024
27 September 2024
Despite being roundly criticised by Labour shadow ministers when in opposition, the notorious outsourcing company appears to be back in the party fold and expecting further lucrative government contracts, SOLOMON HUGHES reports
Reeves
Features / 19 September 2024
19 September 2024
SOLOMON HUGHES reveals how one of the organisations shaping Labour’s investment plans was created by Tories and bankers, looking like a slightly green-flecked PFI vehicle instead of a body for proper investment
Thameslink train
Features / 13 September 2024
13 September 2024
SOLOMON HUGHES explains how rolling stock companies like Angel Trains will continue milking taxpayers for billions even after renationalisation, as Canadian pension funds and Texan oil billionaires cash in on our daily commutes
The Grenfell Memorial Wall in west London. The long-running
Features / 6 September 2024
6 September 2024
SOLOMON HUGHES exposes how executives behind lethal cladding have pocketed £302 million since the tragedy, as Labour frontbenchers continue to schmooze at luxury conferences funded and organised by implicated firms
KS +
Features / 30 August 2024
30 August 2024
SOLOMON HUGHES delves into a consultancy that claims it 'grew out of the labour movement'
walz+
Features / 23 August 2024
23 August 2024
SOLOMON HUGHES points at the Establishment as the inspirers of recent race riots and explains why Brits have a blinkered view of US politics
Features / 15 August 2024
15 August 2024
The sad thing about the fibs being told about ‘green’ hydrogen heating our homes is that there are indeed green, energy-conserving avenues we could explore, but these diversions only obscure them, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
8 - Rayner Starmer
Features / 2 August 2024
2 August 2024
As Angela Rayner pushes for a small but not totally insignificant number of council houses, SOLOMON HUGHES reveals how the Starmer-backed pro-developer Growth Group of MPs is likely planning to undermine this anyway
Starmer Housing
Features / 11 July 2024
11 July 2024
Taylor Wimpey’s eye-watering profits expose Labour’s ‘affordable homes’ plan as a joke. Cushy incentives for private sharks won’t build houses – just bigger exec bonuses, warns SOLOMON HUGHES
Protestors outside the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry at the
Features / 28 June 2024
28 June 2024
Evidence from the Post Office inquiry suggests Simon Blagden – formerly of Fujitsu and now in a government quango role – had greater involvement than previously realised in the notorious IT scandal that blamed subpostmasters for crimes they did not commit, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
8 - Royal International Air Tattoo
Features / 21 June 2024
21 June 2024
Foreign Office documents reveal ministers’ cosy relationship with weapons manufacturers, as they eagerly seek industry input on a confrontational strategy in the Indo-Pacific region, reports SOLOMON HUGHES
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak launches the Conservative Party G
Features / 13 June 2024
13 June 2024
Mainstream media pundits have recently discovered that our PM is terrible at politics, leaving a puzzle over how he reached the top. There’s really no mystery, writes SOLOMON HUGHES, but they wouldn’t like the answers
8keirstarmer
Features / 7 June 2024
7 June 2024
SOLOMON HUGHES explains the logic behind the ‘Ming vase strategy’ that’s firing up the thinking of Starmer and his gang of centrists
An NHS hospital ward
Features / 31 May 2024
31 May 2024
SOLOMON HUGHES shines a light on the US privateer that’s failing to provide safe care to vulnerable mental health patients in services that the NHS is paying millions for
Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves speaking about the economy a
Features / 24 May 2024
24 May 2024
SOLOMON HUGHES examines questions raised about the Crown Commercial Service’s organisation of cross-departmental spending – and finds Labour sadly committed to ‘more of the same’
8 - bring back British rail
Features / 25 April 2024
25 April 2024
One thing about an incoming Labour government looks great: taking the railways into public ownership. But we won’t actually own the trains, warns SOLOMON HUGHES
8 - A&E
Features / 19 April 2024
19 April 2024
If you need a hospital now, you may not realise you are being robbed at the door as private firms cash in on A&E – with Labour waiting in the wings to bring in even more privatisation, warns SOLOMON HUGHES
People inspect the site where World Central Kitchen workers
Features / 12 April 2024
12 April 2024
SOLOMON HUGHES investigates the machinations of the Israeli state and to what extent the headline ‘aid drops’ by sea and air are diversion tactics from its grim starvation plan to drive Palestinians from Gaza
8 - Rees Mogg
Features / 29 March 2024
29 March 2024
As Tories grapple with potential electoral defeat, the faction that fancies its chances is the Trumpite culture warriors that worry even the rabid Thatcherite wing of the party. We can’t just point and laugh, warns SOLOMON HUGHES
8 - Gaza bombed out
Features / 22 March 2024
22 March 2024
The good news is that protests in Western capitals do actually jeopardise crucial arms supplies to Israel — but we need to remember exactly why our leaders continue to support their genocidal ‘strategic ally,’ writes SOLOMON HUGHES
shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves
Features / 15 March 2024
15 March 2024
SOLOMON HUGHES warns Reeves’s proposed national wealth fund hands City financiers control over billions in public money for big business — and we get... to pay!
Keir Starmer Rachel Reeves London Stock Exchange
Features / 8 March 2024
8 March 2024
Champagne receptions all about ‘growth’ under a Labour government that don’t include any plans for actual productive growth and a load of PFI-tainted spivs says it all, laments SOLOMON HUGHES
iain_truss_tweet
Features / 23 February 2024
23 February 2024
Labour seems to think we’ll be impressed about this new defector — but even a cursory glance shows he’s a professional neoliberal lobbyist, not some 'traditional One Nation Tory' concerned with social justice, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
Silver birch
Features / 9 February 2024
9 February 2024
The '80s media fawned over an anti-strike, anti-Scargill supposed 'leader' of dissident miners. Digging in declassified files, SOLOMON HUGHES discovers the police actually thought he lacked support — and brainpower
palestinians
Opinion / 2 February 2024
2 February 2024
Our political class is ready to hound out MPs who even mention Gaza in the same breath as other accepted genocides — yet China’s actions in Xinjiang are ‘a genocide’ despite no mass killings. That doesn’t add up, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Al Shifa
Features / 25 January 2024
25 January 2024
Even when Israel was caught using video 'evidence' it had faked itself, the Western press continued to repeat its murderous fabrications, giving a green light to its war on hospitals in Gaza, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Reeves Starmer
Features / 19 January 2024
19 January 2024
Even the right wing of the Labour Party had been critical of the invasion of the huge ‘management consultancies’ until recently – yet, as power beckons, its got over its reservations. Fancy that, says SOLOMON HUGHES
British Rail RMT
Features / 12 January 2024
12 January 2024
‘Our’ train companies — mostly partly owned from abroad — are trousering millions of taxpayer cash, as usual, reports SOLOMON HUGHES
The actions of the IDF must not be attributed to Jewish peop
Features / 5 January 2024
5 January 2024
Even as Israel ramps up its wilder accusations of anti-Jewish prejudice against those who oppose its war, we need to remember the struggle against racism of all kinds is vital to the left and anti-war movements, warns SOLOMON HUGHES
Keep the NHS public
Features / 22 December 2023
22 December 2023
Britain is back to its bad old ways, spending billions on health service stand-in staff — a vicious cycle that lines up the private providers to take over entirely as the NHS drains its funds on temps, explains SOLOMON HUGHES
Bob Vylan
Features / 14 December 2023
14 December 2023
SOLOMON HUGHES give a full-throated endorsement to punk-tinged, hardcore-splashed, grimey political output of Britain's foremost rap-rock duo
Housing
Features / 14 December 2023
14 December 2023
House building must be ‘attractive’ to people who need a house, not to the for-profit private developers, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Netanyahu
Features / 7 December 2023
7 December 2023
In times of war, the press should consider whether the most sensational stories are true before publishing. Of course, it doesn’t — and there’s no penalty when they turn out to be nonsense, laments SOLOMON HUGHES
IDF
Features / 30 November 2023
30 November 2023
From smaller bombs to more targeted murders, Britain and the US are offering what amounts to advice on the ‘correct manners to massacre’ for their Middle East ally, reports SOLOMON HUGHES
Corbyn
Features / 23 November 2023
23 November 2023
SOLOMON HUGHES looks back at 2018 and the Corbyn wreath-laying controversy — a complete sham that also smeared the West’s now-preferred negotiating partner, the PLO
Effigies of dead children are laid out in Trafalgar Square during demonstrations calling for a ceasefire, November 4 2023
Features / 9 November 2023
9 November 2023
SOLOMON HUGHES exposes the off-the-cuff improvisation of new 'rules' used by the political class and its supporters that are currently being deployed in support of Israel's bloody war on Gaza
a school safety zone sign
Features / 3 November 2023
3 November 2023
The man appointed to regulate schools is the head of a giant academy chain of 41 schools with a turnover in the millions: the boss class’s choice then — and already a friend of the Tory government, reports SOLOMON HUGHES
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair (left) and Labour leader Si
Features / 19 October 2023
19 October 2023
Spreading its neoliberal ‘reform’ mission around the world, the institute has been raking in the cash working for any government that pays — now it’s looking at Britain, warns SOLOMON HUGHES
energy bill
Features / 6 October 2023
6 October 2023
SOLOMON HUGHES reports from Tory Party conference where E.ON and EDF were calling for government action to preserve their profits as thousands of customers struggle to pay their bills
during the State Banquet held at Buckingham Palace in London
Features / 28 September 2023
28 September 2023
Attendance and viewing figures for the coronation show a slump in support for Charles Windsor, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Liz Truss returns
Features / 22 September 2023
22 September 2023
Liz Truss is back as a rebel icon for Tories preparing for a spell in the wilderness — when they return, they may be heralding an all-out ‘flat tax’ assault on our welfare state, warns SOLOMON HUGHES
keir starmer
Features / 14 September 2023
14 September 2023
A recent article by Claire Ainsley conceals more than it reveals about current Labour thinking, says SOLOMON HUGHES
Gillian Keegan
Solomon Hughes / 8 September 2023
8 September 2023
The hotch-potch of local school management allows central government to pass the buck over the Raac concrete crisis, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves
Features / 31 August 2023
31 August 2023
Is the shadow chancellor’s pledge to ‘not tax the rich’ just a ruse to get into office, which will then be reversed? SOLOMON HUGHES looks to a public spending turnaround in 1998 for possible evidence
a general view of staff on a NHS hospital ward at Ealing Hos
Features / 18 August 2023
18 August 2023
SOLOMON HUGHES looks at the multiple IT projects that are currently failing the NHS, and asks why the state doesn’t simply train its own health staff to do the work in-house
Starmer
Features / 3 August 2023
3 August 2023
There’s a swathe of people now belatedly realising just how right-wing and policy-free Starmer’s Labour now is, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
SO+cooper
Features / 14 July 2023
14 July 2023
Shared ownership is set to be another broken retaining wall in the housing crisis, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Boris Johnson
Features / 29 June 2023
29 June 2023
SOLOMON HUGHES laments that the media and the official opposition are more interested in Boris Johnson’s drinking and deceiving than the much larger scandal of deaths in care homes
the BBC Broadcasting House in London
Features / 23 June 2023
23 June 2023
Our state broadcaster is so excited about the dangerous fake news coming from the fringes that it has not bothered to fact-check wildly inaccurate Establishment research, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
Reeves and Starmer sell out
Features / 16 June 2023
16 June 2023
SOLOMON HUGHES reveals why Labour is attempting to build its own spending review body: the existing one might not like its love affair with the outsourcing giants who provide terrible value for public money
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer chairs a meeting with shadow
Features / 9 June 2023
9 June 2023
The proposed massive investment in a greener economy looked like a flagship policy — but it is already on shaky ground when Labour figures cannot make the most basic arguments for it, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer meets customers at the Cupcak
Features / 1 June 2023
1 June 2023
SOLOMON HUGHES probes the reprised role of Lexington Communications – key player in the 1999 cash-for-access scandal
The Louis Vuitton store on New Bond Street, London
Features / 25 May 2023
25 May 2023
Luxury fashion house Luis Vuitton-Moet Hennessy and its chairman have recently become poster-boys for the ugliness of capitalism. SOLOMON HUGHES explains why
Just Eat
Features / 25 May 2023
25 May 2023
An adviser to a shadow minister was handed a tasty freebie in the form of tickets to the British Kebab Awards from notorious ‘gig economy’ employer Just Eat. So much for caring about workers’ rights, says SOLOMON HUGHES
PV
Features / 18 May 2023
18 May 2023
SOLOMON HUGHES discovers that supposed grassroots campaigners from Our Future Our Choice and For Our Future’s Sake who helped deliver Labour’s disastrous second referendum policy are now happily ensconced in pro-Brexit-type jobs
AWKWARD TRUTHS: Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murthy would di
Features / 4 May 2023
4 May 2023
Privateer Circle Healthcare is back, this time funding the wife of a health minister to send business to them — away from the NHS. What a strange coincidence, says SOLOMON HUGHES
stevenage
Features / 20 April 2023
20 April 2023
A think tank that was originally seen as ‘soft-left’ has released a new report that leans right on social issues – and right on economics too. How convenient for the Labour leadership, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
INTELLECTUAL WING: Academic Matthew Goodwin aims to lend his
Features / 13 April 2023
13 April 2023
Matthew Goodwin wants us to worry about a ‘new elite’ of media workers and academics, not the actual elite of billionaires — like his backers. SOLOMON HUGHES unveils the trail
Matt Hancock
Features / 7 April 2023
7 April 2023
To ease the pressure on the NHS, private hospital chains were given state money to take care of non-Covid cases — the problem was, they only did half the work, explains SOLOMON HUGHES
By appointment: Tory-fying the state
Features / 30 March 2023
30 March 2023
This era of crony conservatism has been characterised by sticking failed politicians into any state body available — sometimes to neutralise it, sometimes for a favour down the line, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
WMDs
Features / 24 March 2023
24 March 2023
Back in 2009, SOLOMON HUGHES debunked the media's misinterpretation that an FBI agent’s long-withheld notes showed that Saddam ‘bluffed’ about having germ and nuclear weapons. But now the media is running this fake news once again
serco
Features / 16 March 2023
16 March 2023
SOLOMON HUGHES reports on yet another Covid cash grab that was supposedly designed to help people back to work — but was far better at lining the pockets of the outsourcing giants
If the ‘adults are back in charge’ we’re in deep troub
Features / 3 March 2023
3 March 2023
SOLOMON HUGHES tracks down the dark and disturbing history of one of politics' most tiresome refrains and finds it has never meant anything other than war, neoliberalism — and the childish refusal to properly justify either
grunwick
Features / 24 February 2023
24 February 2023
FOI requests reveal that police and government were avid readers of the Morning Star during the landmark Grunwick strike of the late ’70s, finds SOLOMON HUGHES
keir and reeves
Features / 16 February 2023
16 February 2023
Is it a massive injection of public cash to the tune of billions — or is it another ‘fund’ to attract private finance? Don’t get your hopes up, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
FAMOUR FIGHT: A lone picket is watched by police outside the
Features / 9 February 2023
9 February 2023
SOLOMON HUGHES has obtained the hyperbolic and paranoid police intelligence reports used to justify violence against the famous 1970s strike – disinformation seemingly swallowed whole by the then-governing Labour Party
Grunwick
Features / 3 February 2023
3 February 2023
We can get a glimpse of how industrial action tends to fare under a Labour government by taking a look back to the famous strike of 1976-8, says SOLOMON HUGHES 
GB News at The Point in Paddington, London. Picture date: Su
Features / 26 January 2023
26 January 2023
SOLOMON HUGHES probes Tory MP Lee Anderson’s political incubation ground in the Labour Party
Chris Skidmore MP was subject to a Sky News investigation
Features / 19 January 2023
19 January 2023
Sky News did well to investigate MPs’ links with a firm offering access to government insiders – for a fee. But it’s been less adept at unravelling the significance of their links to a host of health privateers, says SOLOMON HUGHES
Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves and shadow health secretary
Features / 12 January 2023
12 January 2023
Right-wing Labour MPs have been enjoying big cash injections from a millionaire who makes his money through outsourcing and ‘executive’ recruitment work — both to the detriment of the NHS, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
Labour Party General Secretary Iain McNicol delivers a speec
Features / 5 January 2023
5 January 2023
The Labour lord had an underwhelming Commons career as an anti-Corbyn plotter – but with a potential right-wing Labour government in the wings, some lobbying firms see money to be made by buying connections, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
AGAINST THE GATHERING STORM: The Stop the War Coalition prot
Features / 15 December 2022
15 December 2022
The US and British governments could not be too outlandish in their claims about the terror threat Iraq posed to hype up the 2003 invasion: the press, of course, could. SOLOMON HUGHES remembers its ignominious role
Broadband installation has tended to favour wealthier urban
Features / 1 December 2022
1 December 2022
The Tories screwed up the energy market by artificially boosting phoney competition with lots of little firms that went bust and had to be bailed out — incredibly, they are now doing the same for broadband, reports SOLOMON HUGHES
Fat cat top hat
Features / 24 November 2022
24 November 2022
Supposedly, the revolving door between working for the government and working on the government for private business interests is governed by a set of rules: you really wouldn't know it, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Westminster
Features / 17 November 2022
17 November 2022
Westminster is crumbling, along with its legitimacy in the eyes of the populace. A new book from the 'technocratic centre' looks at why this is — but SOLOMON HUGHES argues, it's mainly because MPs would rather perform rituals than deliver progress
NAMING NAMES: Demonstrators outside the Manston immigration
Features / 10 November 2022
10 November 2022
SOLOMON HUGHES reveals the international firms that have brought chaos and degradation to prisons and migrant centres alike
Iraq war british media
Features / 3 November 2022
3 November 2022
There is plenty of mainstream media vitriol nowadays aimed at ‘fake news’ and conspiracy theories from amateur outlets — outrageous when it has never owned up to the pro-war nonsense it published about Iraq, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
PROFITS: PFI man Alan Milburn
Features / 27 October 2022
27 October 2022
Almost two decades ago he was the pro-PFI health secretary – now he and his family trouser millions from his consultancy work for private healthcare interests. Some political stances pay better than others, explains SOLOMON HUGHES
WINNING BIG: Wes Streeting (left) and Rachel Reeves have tro
Features / 13 October 2022
13 October 2022
Some shadow ministers have turned to gambling moguls, former Tory and Lib Dem donors, financiers and other questionable types to fund their individual offices — why is it only ‘sleaze’ when the Tories do it, asks SOLOMON HUGHES
Centre for Policy Studies fringe
Features / 6 October 2022
6 October 2022
It was always going to be a bizarre spectacle to watch the party try and walk off crashing the economy mere days before, but resorting to literal idol worship of Thatcher cut-outs surely spells the end of days for Truss's Tories, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Party leader Sir Keir Starmer making his keynote address dur
Features / 29 September 2022
29 September 2022
Would Starmer’s planned energy firm be a state-owned, cost-cutting, green energy giant that shows Labour is looking to the future with its core values intact? Or would it be a single windmill and a drab kiosk, asks SOLOMON HUGHES
DICTATORS: (left to right) Stylianos Pattakos, Georgios Papa
Features / 22 September 2022
22 September 2022
One royal family attending the late Queen's funeral should have also laid to rest strange illusions in our monarchy being a safeguard against a fascist dictatorship — in 1967 king Constantine ushered one in, explains SOLOMON HUGHES
rail
Features / 15 September 2022
15 September 2022
If you want to see how our taxes end up lining the pockets of billionaire businessmen based in Hong Kong, look no further than the latest accounts of one of the three companies that own our privatised trains, explains SOLOMON HUGHES
Social Mobility Commission
Features / 8 September 2022
8 September 2022
What was once a relatively bona fide group looking at child poverty has long been hijacked by the Tories to victim-blame the poor and disadvantaged — but Liz Truss’s latest appointees are comically biased, reports SOLOMON HUGHES
No Thatcher: the imminent blandness of Liz Truss
Features / 2 September 2022
2 September 2022
SOLOMON HUGHES recalls the Tory hopeful’s championing of tax havens at party conferences as one of the few distinguishing features of her unremarkable political career — nine of which have been as a minister
Summer reads
Features / 25 August 2022
25 August 2022
SOLOMON HUGHES recommends two novels that offer a social panorama on the way we live now
Trains sit on the tracks at Norwich railway station,
Features / 18 August 2022
18 August 2022
What are rolling stock companies? What is Porterbrook? And why is our cash being sucked out of what should be a public service? SOLOMON HUGHES explains all
cartoon
Features / 12 August 2022
12 August 2022
The Labour leader's doublespeak is politics-as-normal, but it makes him untrustworthy to Labour voters and a sitting duck for Tory media
Labour leader Keir Starmer giving a speech at the Sage Gates
Features / 4 August 2022
4 August 2022
Recent history is riddled with examples of public money going to private firms that mess up the services they were paid to provide — so why would Labour sideline itself from being able to call out these scandals? SOLOMON HUGHES explains
Rishi Sunak
Features / 28 July 2022
28 July 2022
There are no significant ideological divides at the top of the Conservative Party — but it can seem like there are when competition for power and influence is so intense. That's why some Tories back two horses, explains SOLOMON HUGHES
READY TO STEP IN: Lord Ashcroft is all for privatising the N
Features / 21 July 2022
21 July 2022
SOLOMON HUGHES illuminates the dark art of Tory trickery in the health service: cut public spending, then pay major party donors like Lord Ashcroft to fill the gaps with their private medical companies
Liam Fox
Features / 30 June 2022
30 June 2022
The US Christian conservative movement is in ecstasy over the blow to abortion rights and is excitedly setting its targets on gays, the unmarried and education — are Britain's own rightwingers building links? SOLOMON HUGHES investigates
Jimmy Knapp
Features / 23 June 2022
23 June 2022
The last time there was a train dispute this big the unions were bouncing back a little after the devastating loss of the miners' strike — SOLOMON HUGHES looks at how multiple simultaneous strikes led to victory over Thatcher
burning
Features / 16 June 2022
16 June 2022
SOLOMON HUGHES looks at how contemporary Indian novels address the social realities of the country
Todd Leventhal (left) was caught denying white phosphorus wa
Features / 9 June 2022
9 June 2022
Thanks to Biden and Truss, cold war-style state-sponsored schemes to combat ‘enemy propaganda’ are back – and they're just as useless as before, inevitably doling out misinformation of their own, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Jobs for the boys... in space
Features / 2 June 2022
2 June 2022
With Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng's appointment of Lord David Willetts as the chair of the as-yet-unlaunched 'UK Space Agency,' Tory cronyism is potentially going where no man has gone before, reports SOLOMON HUGHES
Prime Minister Boris Johnson at 10 Downing Street, London. P
Features / 12 May 2022
12 May 2022
Rather than cracking down on outrageous prices from the Big Six, the Tories promoted phoney ‘competition’ companies that only traded energy rather than produced it – one even hired the PM’s brother as a director, reports SOLOMON HUGHES
Mitie
Features / 5 May 2022
5 May 2022
SOLOMON HUGHES highlights the appointment of Salma Shah to the board of the widely criticised ‘facilities management’ company that’s hoping she’ll help it to win more government contracts
Paul Marshall
Features / 21 April 2022
21 April 2022
SOLOMON HUGHES suspects the real rightward push that hedge fund boss Paul Marshall is sponsoring is the privatise and deregulate, free-market agenda – using ‘culture war’ issues to build support for his media ventures
Christian Wakeford
Features / 14 April 2022
14 April 2022
SOLOMON HUGHES takes a look at the corporate-sponsored events frequented by Tory-turned-Labour-MP Christian Wakeford
Plughole
Features / 7 April 2022
7 April 2022
Having flushed commitments to water nationalisation down the pan, Starmer’s party has nothing useful to say about the mismanagement of wastewater and rampant pollution by private water companies, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair holds a bilateral meetin
Features / 31 March 2022
31 March 2022
It's not 'left-wing apologists' in Britain that have helped Putin on his way, it's the Tory and Labour right who were happy to see a strong-man autocrat in power to protect their business interests, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
Keir Starmer
Features / 24 March 2022
24 March 2022
Members aren't picking up the bill because they've left in droves, so Labour's relying on the charitable impulses of people like Anthony Watson and Deborah Mattinson — whose agenda you can probably already guess, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Features / 17 March 2022
17 March 2022
The dangerous and damaging hydraulic fracturing process is a big hit with the crackpot Conservative right — who fell for a US conman and porn huckster gassing them up about it in 2013, remembers SOLOMON HUGHES
RMT cleaners
Features / 17 March 2022
17 March 2022
The subcontractor claims it cannot afford to pay the people who keep our trains safe and tidy more than minimum wage. Of course they can, reveals SOLOMON HIGHES — they're rolling in it
Andrew Griffith
Features / 10 March 2022
10 March 2022
SOLOMON HUGHES introduces Andrew Griffith – whose appointment to head the PM’s policy unit is a blunt example of how power works in Britain
Features / 3 March 2022
3 March 2022
The Swedish multinational has been caught breaking laws against bribery around the globe — but are its actions really that different from the ‘lobbying’ tactics available to corporations legally, asks SOLOMON HUGHES
KS
Features / 24 February 2022
24 February 2022
Labour centrists seek to represent workers in a sort of cultural theatre of identity politics devoid of substance or any relevance to their lives and struggles
The Starmer-Savile smear is indeed a smear
Features / 18 February 2022
18 February 2022
You don't need to be a Labour loyalist to say Starmer wasn't soft on sex crimes — but neither is it a rumour of murky, far-right origins: it's from the mainstream media, despite their current contrived outrage, explains SOLOMON HUGHES
Jo Bamford, the son of JCB magnate Lord Tony Bamford
Features / 10 February 2022
10 February 2022
SOLOMON HUGHES probes a court case involving one of Britain’s top corporate families that provides a cautionary lesson on the foolishness of the super-rich
Major Blair Boris
Features / 3 February 2022
3 February 2022
When the Tory government of the early ’90s was brought down by sleaze, the papers focused on the salacious and sexual. Those MPs who denounced the corporate gravy train too would only go on to ride it, remembers SOLOMON HUGHES
Tony Blair
Features / 27 January 2022
27 January 2022
After a conciliatory promise to keep anti-strike laws but strengthen union recognition, Blair backtracked — and many accused him of colluding with big business. New evidence shows that indeed he was, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
tug
Features / 20 January 2022
20 January 2022
SOLOMON HUGHES looks in detail at the government’s pet privatisation contractor, the Mitie Group
ICCF prince charles
Solomon Hughes / 13 January 2022
13 January 2022
Putting the dodgy conservation credentials of ICCF under a microscope
Keir Starmer hard work
Solomon Hughes / 13 January 2022
13 January 2022
Smashed labour cartoon
Features / 6 January 2022
6 January 2022
Neo-Blairites get strangely embarrassed by New Labour’s PFI schemes, NHS privatisation and Atos welfare checks, observes SOLOMON HUGHES
Liam Byrne and Liam Fox
Features / 30 December 2021
30 December 2021
SOLOMON HUGHES takes a look at the Register of MPs’ Interests
BBC stock photo
Features / 16 December 2021
16 December 2021
The BBC might prefer us to think of its pundits as ‘neutral’ on topics of the day, but then why is it glossing over their vested sources of income, asks SOLOMON HUGHES
Starmer privatised water
Features / 9 December 2021
9 December 2021
Nationalising water is more popular than the party itself — but Starmer's Labour, with its ideological inheritance from the Blair era and the well-trodden path from politics to consultancy work in mind, won't take the plunge, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
A woman leans on a grave stone in Potocari, near Srebrenica,
Features / 25 November 2021
25 November 2021
Why did a leading arms firm foot the bill for seven MPs to go on a fact finding mission to the Balkans, asks SOLOMON HUGHES
Rachel Reeves (left) and  Keir Starmer have disavowed public
Features / 25 November 2021
25 November 2021
Labour has turned its back on nationalisation just as Johnson’s Tories are being forced to nationalise failing privately run pubic services, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Lord Falconer
Features / 18 November 2021
18 November 2021
Cynicism about politicians typically serves the Tory vote, which thrives on a negative view of humanity — but the situation is not helped when Labour figures too are caught with their snouts in some of the nastiest second-job troughs going, reports SOLOMON HUGHES
‘Vote for the Lib Dems’ Alastair Campbel
Features / 11 November 2021
11 November 2021
SOLOMON HUGHES picks apart some revealing comments by the head of comms at the People’s Vote campaign
Chequers
Features / 4 November 2021
4 November 2021
Worried that Labour leaders may be too close to the hoi polloi, at the start of the last century the Tories put in place a weekend life of luxury as a country gent for all PMs — SOLOMON HUGHES reveals a shady instance of institutionalised bribery
Owen Paterson
Features / 4 November 2021
4 November 2021
Keir Starmer seemed to be hammering the Tories for once over the Owen Paterson scandal — but on closer inspection his limited proposals would have little effect on moonlighting MPs, explains SOLOMON HUGHES
Railway 12/2/18
Features / 28 October 2021
28 October 2021
Starmer’s Labour seems to think a party that promises little is more admired, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Minister for the Armed Forces James Heappey at the Camp Bast
Features / 8 October 2021
8 October 2021
Britain needs to forget trying to shape nations through military interventions, and start making deals with existing regimes in order to stop Russia and China gaining influence, SOLOMON HUGHES hears at a Tory Party fringe
The S*N
Features / 4 October 2021
4 October 2021
News UK boss David Dinsmore is keen for newspapers to avoid regulation under the new Online Safety Bill. SOLOMON HUGHES reports from the Tory Party conference fringe
Keir Starmer
Features / 30 September 2021
30 September 2021
It is not an empty cliche: ‘hard-working families’ was the harbinger of New Labour’s ruthless and indefensible attacks on the welfare state. SOLOMON HUGHES dissects Starmer’s weasel words
Features / 30 September 2021
30 September 2021
One of the only well-delivered cracks this week at conference came from a right-wing MP Conor McGinn — but it didn't leave me smiling, reports SOLOMON HUGHES
Peter Mandelson
Features / 23 September 2021
23 September 2021
Peter Mandelson might be giving unofficial advice to Keir Starmer — but in his day job running lobbying firm Global Counsel, he is hiring former Conservative ministers, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
s
Features / 23 September 2021
23 September 2021
It seems simple: get the big money men and women to finance a Labour Party that represents them and their business interests, just like Blair. The problem is, writes SOLOMON HUGHES, that Blair won elections — Starmer does not
Bin Laden and Zawahiri
Features / 16 September 2021
16 September 2021
Bin Laden's underground mountain network with hydroelectric power and 1,000 fighters has been forgotten since it dominated the news in 2001 — because it never existed. SOLOMON HUGHES drops a bunker buster on a classic incidence of war propaganda
Features / 9 September 2021
9 September 2021
'British forces would not be in the country on a long-term basis' claimed a nervous Tony Blair in 2001. How easily 'several months' becomes two decades once the wheels of war turn, says SOLOMON HUGHES
September 11
Features / 9 September 2021
9 September 2021
The US saw the attacks as an act of war — so instead of simply setting out to catch the perpetrators, decided to 'go massive' with a disastrous display of military might that has now laid bare the declining status of the US empire, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Afghanistan: do we really need to listen to the Humvee sales
Features / 2 September 2021
2 September 2021
The US-British occupation was a miserable failure — but instead of looking for dodgy pundits to say it wasn’t, the press should be asking why it failed, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Grenfell
Features / 26 August 2021
26 August 2021
The government is trying to use Brexit to rejuvenate its anti-regulation approach – but just how ‘independent’ are its supposedly independent new advisory reports, asks SOLOMON HUGHES
Jeanine Anez in prison
Features / 26 August 2021
26 August 2021
Tories and liberals got it disastrously wrong over Bolivia in their rush to smear Labour, says SOLOMON HUGHES
The empire that drowned in the Suez
Features / 19 August 2021
19 August 2021
Incredibly, 65 years after General Nasser showed Britain the door, there are MPs that seem to think we can one day have successful solo imperial adventures again. Nonsense, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
How Mandelson played both sides of Brexit
Features / 19 August 2021
19 August 2021
Despite being a key architect of the Remainiac ‘people’s vote’ disaster, the Blairite was also ‘advising’ private equity firms on how to make bank on Brexit — with help from Tory minister Gove, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
Starmer rubbish
Features / 6 August 2021
6 August 2021
Starmer and his team are always doing the party down – but what’s the logic behind this self-defeating behaviour, asks SOLOMON HUGHES
Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove
Features / 30 July 2021
30 July 2021
When you launch your programme to shake up central government at an event funded by a former Tory insider’s firm that tries win public-sector contracts for the corporations, it is clear that privatisation is the real goal, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
A Taylor Wimpey housing development
Features / 22 July 2021
22 July 2021
The government's help to buy scheme doesn't address the housing crisis, notes SOLOMON HUGHES: it just boosts developers' profits
Robert Halfon
Features / 22 July 2021
22 July 2021
SOLOMON HUGHES welcomes a thorough deconstruction of the Tory bid to blame anti-racists for working-class underachievement
Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer
Features / 16 July 2021
16 July 2021
Labour needs to show it believes in real change based on the economic needs of working people — and half-hearted noises about ‘fixing sick pay’ don’t go nearly far enough, says SOLOMON HUGHES
Capita
Features / 8 July 2021
8 July 2021
Why have the BBC and Guardian’s reporting on the scandal of Greater Manchester Police computer system failings been so reluctant to name the company responsible, asks SOLOMON HUGHES
Robert Halfon
Features / 25 June 2021
25 June 2021
SOLOMON HUGHES gives the long history of ignorant and reactionary Tory interventions into education that attempt to hide the problems caused by cuts with contrived and ridiculous debates over culture and tradition
Perry
Features / 18 June 2021
18 June 2021
The non-discriminatory, revolving door between state office and business continues at full swing for any and all would be ‘influencers,’ writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Features / 10 June 2021
10 June 2021
Why does anyone listen to them, asks SOLOMON HUGHES
British army
Features / 10 June 2021
10 June 2021
SOLOMON HUGHES reports on the revolving door from the British army to defence corporations like General Dynamics, whose latest £3.5bn vehicle is an unusable clunker
Conservative MP Damian Green
Features / 3 June 2021
3 June 2021
SOLOMON HUGHES suspects Abellio’s hiring of Damian Green probably has something to do with the government’s rail reforms
Labour leader Keir Starmer and Deputy Leader Angela Rayner o
Features / 28 May 2021
28 May 2021
Is Labour under Starmer now going to Pasokify into oblivion, and was the Corbyn moment just a blip on this journey, asks SOLOMON HUGHES
labour right
Features / 14 May 2021
14 May 2021
By bending history, the Labour right is trying to convince us that social reform is deeply unpopular with the voters and the only way forward is further into bland technocracy. SOLOMON HUGHES gives the facts - on past and present
UNJUSTLY ACCUSED: Subpostmasters (left to right) Seema Misra
Features / 6 May 2021
6 May 2021
The IT firm that sued the government for its own poor work also supplied the faulty equipment that saw innocent workers jailed for theft. How were they rewarded? With more state contracts, explains SOLOMON HUGHES
tories
Features / 29 April 2021
29 April 2021
SOLOMON HUGHES reveals the real reason why we have flitted wildly from lockdowns to free-for-alls: lack of decent sick pay
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED: Keep Our NHS Public campaigner and exe
Features / 23 April 2021
23 April 2021
SOLOMON HUGHES warns over the megacorp that’s been repeatedly fined in the US for medical and financial failures and which is looking to expand into Britain’s health and social care
Megan and Phil
Features / 16 April 2021
16 April 2021
The press treatment of two very different royals and the complicity of the political establishment are all you need to know about engrained bigotry in Britain, argues SOLOMON HUGHES
US President Joe Biden and Labour leader Keir Starmer
Features / 8 April 2021
8 April 2021
Sir Keir’s determination to show he is a break with Labour’s left is putting him to the right of Biden, says SOLOMON HUGHES
Ian Austin
Features / 2 April 2021
2 April 2021
SOLOMON HUGHES finds yet more links between Public First, a Tory-led consultancy and the former-Labour MP's anti-Corbyn 'spoiler' campaign
William Shawcross
Features / 2 April 2021
2 April 2021
What do you do with a neocon who thinks Islam is a ‘terrifying problem’ in Europe and wrote a book to justify torturing terror suspects? Make him the ‘independent reviewer’ for Prevent. SOLOMON HUGHES reports
Kerala
Features / 25 March 2021
25 March 2021
The doorstep health workers of India’s communist state show that it’s human assistance that makes self-isolation possible, not the call centres and crib sheets favoured by the Tories, says SOLOMON HUGHES
public first
Features / 19 March 2021
19 March 2021
The Tories’ Covid communications were run by a true-blue Conservative ‘consultancy firm’ appointed without any bidding or competition. SOLOMON HUGHES exposes their world of ‘nods and winks’
Leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg (left) and N
Features / 11 March 2021
11 March 2021
The Northern Research Group, sponsored by one of our biggest and most disreputable banks, has concluded that the investment needed to keep newly won seats Tory will of course line the pockets of money men many miles south, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Bloor Homes
Features / 4 March 2021
4 March 2021
SOLOMON HUGHES introduces another housebuilder making the most of the government’s dodgy housing schemes
Taylor Wimpey
Features / 4 March 2021
4 March 2021
Don’t believe the government’s hot air about ‘creating housing’ has anything to do with solving homelessness — it’s all to boost the profits of the housebuilding corporations that offer them donations and jobs, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
EASY RIDE: Even Johnson’s critics come from the pro-Tory p
Features / 25 February 2021
25 February 2021
There is no popular demand for ‘anti-lockdown’ policies, in fact quite the opposite — but you’d never know from the overrepresentation of Tory groups and gripes in the media. Even dissent is now limited to the ruling party, laments SOLOMON HUGHES
Labour turncoat John Woodcock MP for Barrow & Furness, speak
Features / 18 February 2021
18 February 2021
Crude scaremongering by the Tories is in tune with Labour right's prevailing paranoias
Sitel call centre at the Maxim Business Park near Motherwell
Features / 12 February 2021
12 February 2021
SOLOMON HUGHES exposes the chancers behind Sitel, the ‘inadequate’ firm that won a contract for Britain’s contact-tracing system
Features / 11 February 2021
11 February 2021
SCARE TACTICS: The theory that Muslims aim to ‘replace’
Features / 28 January 2021
28 January 2021
SOLOMON HUGHES warns that the dangerous idea that ‘whites are being replaced’ by immigrant Muslims and 'must fight not to become a minority' has been made acceptable by mainstream writers like Douglas Murray
kwarteng
Features / 21 January 2021
21 January 2021
SOLOMON HUGHES asks: does the new ‘free marketeer’ Business Secretary’s appointment mean the PM is abandoning his tilt to the former ‘red wall’?
boris
Features / 14 January 2021
14 January 2021
SOLOMON HUGHES writes that although the government has talked tough on controlling who comes in and out of the nation, when it comes to making money from tourism and travel the gates have remained open — despite the pandemic
Private prison
Features / 7 January 2021
7 January 2021
SOLOMON HUGHES introduces the scandal-hit MTC group who have come from across the Atlantic to coin it running our privatised prisons
harding
Features / 17 December 2020
17 December 2020
The elite's class solidarity is as impressive as it is depressingly corrupt and amoral, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
johnson
Features / 10 December 2020
10 December 2020
The PM is hijacking the memory of the post-war settlement with talk of 'building back better' after the pandemic. What nonsense, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
OLD MONEY: The descendants of Sir Nicholas, pictured in 1962
Features / 10 December 2020
10 December 2020
SOLOMON HIGHES looks at the ancient stash of 'posh cash' that is funding the Tories' attempts to court the Northern working class
CULTURE WARROR: Douglas Murray (grey suit, left) confronts A
Features / 3 December 2020
3 December 2020
SOLOMON HUGHES looks at the phenomenon of flash right-wing media that doesn’t make any real money, existing only to satisfy the political desires of right-wing men with deep pockets
NEW ROLE: Charlie Taylor (left) pictured with then education
Features / 26 November 2020
26 November 2020
SOLOMON HUGHES takes a look at the background of the new Chief Inspector of Prisons, Gove protégé Charlie Taylor
HAND-IN-GLOVE: (Above) Work on the construction aircraft car
Features / 19 November 2020
19 November 2020
The Prime Minister’s commitment to spending on warfare rather than welfare is good news for the arms-corporation grifters, says SOLOMON HUGHES