Preferable to Starmer he may be, but there is scant sign of a sharp political break in Burnham’s policies so far — while left challenges aren’t making much of a running either, finds ANDREW MURRAY. How can socialism be put back on the map?
I WROTE last month that the Tories were insisting on using our schools as the battleground to fight their culture wars. Well, since then they have decided to ramp this up yet further.
First, they declared that, contrary to popular belief, the cause of white British boys falling behind their peers is not a decade of austerity, the decimation of working-class communities and the chronic underfunding of the education system — it is in fact the fault of the lefty Marxist woke brigade and their “politically controversial language.”
Using the phrase “white privilege,” insists the education select committee in a report, is the reason for the attainment gap between working-class white boys and those from other ethnic groups — not the systematic neglect of large swathes of our population by successive right-wing governments.
In verse and polemic, the bard points out that he is a poet and musician, not a political party
The selection, analysis and interpretation of historical ‘facts’ always takes place within a paradigm, a model of how the world works. That’s why history is always a battleground, declares the Marx Memorial Library
A teaching delegation to Cuba offered IAN DUCKETT a powerful glimpse into a schooling system defined by care, creativity and the legacy of the island’s remarkable 1961 literacy campaign
KEVAN NELSON reports back from a delegation to the epic celebrations for the anniversary of Vietnam’s 1945 revolution, where British communists found a thriving, prosperous socialist country, brimming with ambition and well-earned national pride



