JOHN ELLISON looks back at Labour’s opportunistic tendency, when in office, to veer to the right on policy as well as ideological worldview

The distinction between domestic and military drones is more theoretical than practical, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT

DAN ROSS looks at the difference between reality and myth over Tiananmen Square, 1989

Starmer should not need to wait for the High Court’s decision on F-35 parts in order to do the right thing, warns CLAUDIA WEBBE

SABINA PRICE reports from the World Federation of Democratic Youth general assembly in Namibia

Long-term monitoring gives an in-depth picture of marine heatwaves around our coastline, writes TIM SMYTH

DAVID CONWAY explores how trades councils uniquely bring together diverse local groups to tackle everything from domestic abuse to green campaigns, but warns they must attract younger delegates and use social media more effectively

A devastating new 44-page report reveals Labour’s cuts will push 400,000 into poverty and cost disabled people up to £10,000 annually, while the government refuses to make savings by cutting spending on war instead, writes Dr DYLAN MURPHY

Recent charges under Scotland’s Hunting with Dogs Act highlight enforcement gaps, writes KIERAN COLES, revealing how police routinely give hunts notice of their presence in advance, effectively removing any chance of catching lawbreakers red-handed

As Trump targets universities while Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem redefines habeas corpus as presidential deportation power, STEPHEN ARNELL traces how John Scopes’s optimism about academic freedom’s triumph now seems tragically premature

Here are the voices of DANIEL KEBEDE, FRAN HEATHCOTE, HOLLY TURNER and LEANNE MOHAMAD explaining why they will be taking part in the People’s Assembly No More Austerity demo next weekend 

DIANE ABBOTT MP argues that Labour’s proposals contained in the recent white paper won’t actually bring down immigration numbers or win support from Reform voters — but they will succeed in making politics more nasty and poisonous 
 

Exempting military expenditure from austerity while slashing welfare represents a fundamental misallocation of resources that guarantees continued decline, argues MICHAEL BURKE

In the conclusion of his two-part article, PETER MERTENS reveals that while global military spending hits $2.7 trillion with European arms company profits soaring 1,000%, €1 invested in hospitals creates 2.5 times more jobs than weapons

IAN LAWRENCE welcomes the government sentencing review but warns past experience shows such words rarely translate into meaningful action

In the first half of a two-part article, PETER MERTENS looks at how Nato’s €800 billion ‘Readiness 2030’ plan serves Washington’s pivot to the Pacific, forcing Europeans to dismantle social security and slash pensions to fund it

Human rights activist PETE STEVENSON, aka Pete the Poet, considers alternative ways of holding a meeting

The German Chancellor seeks EU sanctions on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to prevent future governments from resuming Russian gas deliveries, delivering a devastating blow to German industry — and German workers, writes RAINER RUPP

Noboa’s second term looks set to deepen his neoliberal policies: reduced public investment, privatization, cuts to social programmes, and militarisation, says  PILAR TROYA FERNANDEZ

Peaceful protesters are facing increasingly authoritarian clampdowns, including two recent arrests for putting a sticker on a Barclays ATM. LYNDA WALKER reports

RONNIE KASRILS pays tribute to Ruth First, a fearless fighter against South African apartheid, in the centenary month of her birth

Despite internal pressure over the Gaza genocide, Narendra Modi’s government has deepened relations with Tel Aviv. ROGER McKENZIE explores the geopolitics behind these strengthening links

ALASTAIR BONNETT reports on the paradoxes of populist attitudes towards protection of the natural world

The Tories’ trouble is rooted in the British capitalist Establishment now being more disoriented and uncertain of its social mission than before, argues ANDREW MURRAY

Our roving AGM from this Thursday through Sunday and our upcoming Morning Star Conference 2025 on June 14 in London are great opportunities to meet the team and help plan the way forward, says editor BEN CHACKO

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

Under Modi’s hard-right regime, India is going backwards — but not in the state of Kerala, where the communist-led government continues to deliver remarkable results in infrastructure, economic growth, healthcare, welfare, education, science and social harmony, reports PEOPLE’S DEMOCRACY

TERRY HANSEN explains how Netanyahu’s boasts of 92,000 aid trucks contradict his own January admission of providing ‘minimal humanitarian aid’ and decades of Israeli documents reveal policies designed to keep Palestinians at ‘minimal subsistence’ levels since 1991

In 2024, 19 households grew richer by $1 trillion while 66 million households shared 3 per cent of wealth in the US, validating Marx’s prediction that capitalism ‘establishes an accumulation of misery corresponding with accumulation of capital,’ writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY

JOHN GREEN observes how Berlin’s transformation from socialist aspiration to imperial nostalgia mirrors Germany’s dangerous trajectory under Chancellor Merz — a BlackRock millionaire and anti-communist preparing for a new war with Russia

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

Israel’s messianic settler regime has moved beyond military containment to mass ethnic cleansing, making any two-state solution based on differential rights impossible — we must support the Palestinian demand for decolonisation, writes HUGH LANNING

BILL GREENSHIELDS invites all and sundry to this years’ Derby Silk Mill Lockout March, Rally and People’s Festival on June 7

As Gaza burns and politicians abandon ‘bairns not bombs’ slogans to embrace a war economy, MATT KERR exposes the real purpose behind Britain’s EU fishing agreement: accessing €150 billion in militarisation funds

RMT’s former president ALEX GORDON explains why his union supports defence diversification and a just transition for workers in regions dependent on military contracts, and calls on readers to join CND’s demo against nuclear-armed submarines on June 7
 

In part two of May’s Berlin Bulletin, VICTOR GROSSMAN, having assessed the policies of the new government, looks at how the opposition is faring

David Lammy is now calling Israel’s escalation of the Gaza genocide morally unjustifiable — but what is truly unjustifiable is for Lammy to say this while directly arming and providing surveillance information for the genocide, writes NUVPREET KALRA

PRABHAT PATNAIK details the epochal shift of political power from Western neocolonialists to the people

Police guidelines suggesting home searches and digital checks for women who experience pregnancy loss under suspicion of having broken the outdated 1967 Abortion Act have sparked uproar, writes PEOPLES’ HEALTH DISPATCH 

MAT COWARD tells the extraordinary story of the second world war Spitfire pilot who became Britain’s most famous Stalag escaper, was awarded an MBE, mentored a generation of radio writers and co-founded a hardline Marxist-Leninist party

SOLOMON HUGHES details how the firm has quickly moved on to buttering-up Labour MPs after the fall of the Tories so it can continue to ‘win both ways’ collecting public and private cash by undermining the NHS

In part one of his Berlin bulletin, VICTOR GROSSMAN assesses the economic and political difficulties facing the new Merz government — and a regrettable ruling-class consensus on the solutions

The intensified Israeli military operations in Gaza are an attempt by Netanyahu to project strength amid perceived political vulnerability, argues RAMZY BAROUD

MARK FAIRHURST highlights the main issues facing officers in a long neglected service, and raised by front-line delegates at POA conference last week, including understaffing, violence, bullying and the ongoing denial of workers’ right to strike

A bizarre on-air rant by Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s head of counter-terrorism, shines a light on the present state of transatlantic relations, says NICK WRIGHT

As the UAE-backed RSF carries out drone strikes on humanitarian infrastructure in war-torn Sudan, the US sells more weapons to the UAE, writes PAVAN KULKARNI    

Black Americans already understand what genocide looks like, argues the Black Alliance for Peace, who are supporting the complaint, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER

Nature's self-reconstruction is both intriguing and beneficial and as such merits human protection, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT

While claiming to target fraud, Labour’s snooping Bill strips benefit recipients of privacy rights and presumption of innocence, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE, warning that algorithms with up to 25 per cent error rates could wrongfully investigate and harass millions of vulnerable people

ANYA COOK reports from the Newcastle citizens’ assembly, where over 240 people gathered to create a people’s manifesto ahead of next year’s local elections – part of former mayor Jamie Driscoll’s Majority movement

While working people face austerity, arms companies enjoy massive government contracts, writes ARTHUR WEST, exposing how politicians exaggerate the Russian threat to justify spending on a sector that has the lowest employment multiplier 

Head of education, campaigns and organising for the General Federation of Trade Unions HENRY FOWLER explains why it is launching a fund to support trades councils and give them access to a new range of courses and resources

Real security comes from having a secure base at home — Keir Starmer’s reckless and renegade decision to get Britain deeper into the proxy war against Russia is as dangerous as it is wasteful, writes SALLY SPIERS

The plan is to stigmatise and destabilise South Africa in preparation for breaking it up while creating a confused and highly racialised atmosphere around immigration in the US to aid in denying rights to non-white refugees, explains EMILE SCHEPERS

ALAN SIMPSON warns that Starmer’s triangulation strategy will fail just as New Labour’s did, with each rightward move by Labour pushing Tories further right

From the 1917 Balfour Declaration to today’s F-35 sales, Britain’s historical responsibility has now evolved into support for the present-day outright genocide. But our solidarity movement is growing too, writes BEN JAMAL

As Starmer flies to Albania seeking deportation camps while praising Giorgia Meloni, KEVIN OVENDEN warns that without massive campaigns rejecting this new overt government xenophobia, Britain faces a soaring hard right and emboldened fascist thugs on the streets

MAT COWARD rises over such semantics to offer step by step, fool-proof cultivating tips

DIANE ABBOTT MP warns Starmer’s newly declared war on foreigners and scroungers won’t fix housing or services — only class struggle against austerity can do that, and defeat Farage in the process

We’ll be developing a people’s manifesto for the 2026 local elections. We’ll network, learn, inspire and support each other and chart a future path for socialist politics, writes JAMIE DRISCOLL