Councillor SAM WHEELER says there’s a tangible shift in mood on the left in the city whose mayor has recently become PM — but there’s no room for complacency
During the morning rush hour in London, bleak and cold and grey, everyone rushes without a second’s thought for anything else other than the job they are enslaved to. There is a competition for space on the trains so no-one misses work they can’t afford to miss. No-one spares a second’s thought for the other person. The Tube during the morning rush hour is a metaphor for dog-eat-dog individualism.
Above the streaming masses of people absorbed in their work, the shadow of skyscrapers loom over people. Locked away in the high rooms are the kind of people insulated from the grey rain, inequality and poverty that envelops millions of ordinary people.
What does politics mean for these people? It’s plausible to imagine very little. Politics is spoken in a different language today, swayed by the lure of corporate ambitions and grounded in fear by that too.
Latin America is being swept by a series of right-wing electoral victories. But behind that shift to the right lies less of an ideological conversion than anger, fear, insecurity, and a deep crisis of democracy, asserts MARC VANDEPITTE
JENN FORBES of Your Party says many will welcome the end of Keir Starmer’s leadership, but it’s time we stopped leaving politics to the politicians
Apart from a bright spark of hope in the victory of the Gaza motion, this year’s conference lacked vision and purpose — we need to urgently reconnect Labour with its roots rather than weakly aping the flag-waving right, argues KIM JOHNSON MP



