Seventeen years after losing her council job due to needing endometriosis surgery, Michelle Dewar’s campaign for paid menstrual leave gained 50,000 signatures in a week, reports ELIZABETH SHORT

MY MUM told me how, as an 18-year-old worker in a Dunstable aircraft factory, she traced every advance of the Red Army on a map, illustrated with the image of Uncle Joe, on her bedroom wall.
For her the threat of fascism was real. Throughout the war my grandparents housed a Dutch family, refugees from the Nazi invasion. My father, as a 21-year-old factory worker, was prepared by the Communist Party for clandestine work and was given a false identity in anticipation of a Nazi occupation. The party even bought up a local newspaper in preparation for the suppression of the Daily Worker.
In the working class there was tremendous opposition to war but a great fear of a Nazi invasion combined with a real sense that the ruling class was preparing to do a deal with the Nazis.

Starmer sabotaged Labour with his second referendum campaign, mobilising a liberal backlash that sincerely felt progressive ideals were at stake — but the EU was then and is now an entity Britain should have nothing to do with, explains NICK WRIGHT

Deep disillusionment with the Westminster cross-party consensus means rupture with the status quo is on the cards – bringing not only opportunities but also dangers, says NICK WRIGHT

Holding office in local government is a poisoned chalice for a party that bases its electoral appeal around issues where it has no power whatsoever, argues NICK WRIGHT

From Gaza complicity to welfare cuts chaos, Starmer’s baggage accumulates, and voters will indeed find ‘somewhere else’ to go — to the Greens, nationalists, Lib Dems, Reform UK or a new, working-class left party, writes NICK WRIGHT