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
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Green Finance Institute: much ‘finance,’ little green
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
Rachel Reeves met Green Finance Institute chief executive Rhian-Mari Thomas at Davos this January; Thomas says she told Reeves to junk her existing £28 billion public investment plan and let her put Labour ‘in the room’ with the finance industry, resulting in the much smaller £7.3bn fund to work alongside the banks
In the face of funding cuts, closures and a shift into women’s centres providing criminal justice-only services rather than a holistic approach, RUTH HUNT urges women to protect existing resources, volunteer and build new networks of support
The CPB's congress aims to build the united front against monopoly capitalism, utilising the YCL’s promising new generation of militants — but our party remains far from the strength history requires of it, despite recent progress, writes JOHNNIE HUNTER
From Palestine, to racism, to fiscal rules and migrant rights, DIANE ABBOTT surveys some of the main themes of Labour conference this week
We must remember how the CPGB led anti-fascist movement defeated Mosley’s BUF in September 1936 and apply the lessons of mass mobilisation and open, unapologetic confrontation to the rise of the far right today, writes DYLAN MURPHY
On the anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, DAVID ROSENBERG reflects on his encounters with those who were there that day in 1936 – and suggests two urgent tasks for the anti-fascists of today
WHAT is the Green Finance Institute, the organisation behind Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s National Wealth Fund plans? Turns out it is an un-transparent, bank-oriented company cooked up between then Tory chancellor Phillip Hammond and the City of London.
Reeves and Ed Miliband say that from April 2024, the Green Finance Institute gave “policy support on the Labour Party’s National Wealth Fund,” running the task force designing the fund, in a donation worth £99,000.
Green Finance Institute chief executive Rhian-Mari Thomas told the Guardian she personally persuaded Reeves to redesign her green investment plans, lobbying the future Chancellor at Davos this January.
Thomas, who spent 19 years as a Barclays banker, says she told Reeves to junk her existing £28 billion public investment plan and let her put Labour “in the room” with the finance industry, resulting in the much smaller £7.3bn fund to work alongside the banks.
An ex-banker persuading the future Chancellor to rewrite her policy, reducing public investment, at the corporate Glastonbury of Davos, sounds like Labour dancing to a City tune.
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The new angle from private firms shmoozing their way into public contracts was the much-trumpeted arrival of ‘artificial intelligence’ — and no-one seemed to have heard the numerous criticisms of this unproven miracle cure, reports SOLOMON HUGHES
It is rather strange that Labour continues to give prestigious roles to inappropriate, controversy-mired businessmen who are also major Tory donors. What could Labour possibly be hoping to get out of it, asks SOLOMON HUGHES
Keir Starmer’s hiring Tim Allan from Tory-led Strand Partners is another illustration of Labour’s corporate-influence world where party differences matter less than business connections, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
MBDA’s Alabama factory makes components for Boeing’s GBU-39 bombs used to kill civilians in Gaza. Its profits flow through Stevenage to Paris — and it is one of the British government’s favourite firms, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
