As Colombia approaches presidential elections next year, the US decision to decertify the country in the war on drugs plays into the hands of its allies on the political right, writes NICK MacWILLIAM
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Class, history and geography in the general election
KEITH FLETT offers some historical context to the election campaign’s final period
Starmer and Sunak arrive for their BBC debate in Nottingham
The move against alleged PKK members that sparked outrage as a community centre in north London was raided last year has now come to trial, writes TONY BURKE, but in the meantime, the peace process abroad has changed the situation almost entirely
A new report points a way to overcome complacent framing of climate issues, ‘by sparking a wider public reckoning with climate realities,’ and reconnecting with working-class people. IAN SINCLAIR reports
We cannot understand today’s world without understanding the rise of China – and we cannot understand China without understanding how it was shaped by the second world war, writes JENNY CLEGG
NICK WRIGHT reports from Italy, where 80 cities saw Gaza strikes as unions paralysed transport and massive crowds clashed with police in Milan — but France is also kicking off, and Westminster, in a very different way, is facing a crisis of legitimacy too
Escalating anti-China rhetoric from the West has a clear purpose – to manufacture consent for the new cold war, and potentially a hot one, argues CARLOS MARTINEZ
A FOOTNOTE that the socialist historian EP Thompson made to his A Psessay in Ephology about the 1959 general election, though over 60 years old, does seem to capture quite well the relation between the media, leaders debate and opinion polls currently: “A psephologist is a man employed by the mass media to research into what people think the mass media has told them to think. An ephologist is a man employed by the Observer or BBC to interpret the results of psephology and who makes an ephing good thing out of it.”
Polling outfit Ipsos has published an MRP poll which shows the current break down of support in each constituency. For those who want the Tories out its good news. There is a Labour landslide coming with even hard-right figures like Robert Jenrick, Suella Braverman and Liz Truss not safe.
The headlines generated by such polls often come with brief if unexplained historical references. For example, the Tories are set to win fewer seats than at any election for over 100 years.
Meanwhile the projected Labour majority could be one of the largest the party has ever achieved. Sir Keir Starmer goes on constantly about his changed Labour Party but it is not a new approach. Very similar wording was used by Tony Blair in 1997. By “change” of course he means that he has purged much of the left from Labour. Purging voters is more difficult.
More from this author
In 1981, towering figure for the British left Tony Benn came a whisker away from victory, laying the way for a wave of left-wing Labour Party members, MPs and activism — all traces of which are now almost entirely purged by Starmer, writes KEITH FLETT
Who you ask and how you ask matter, as does why you are asking — the history of opinion polls shows they are as much about creating opinions as they are about recording them, writes socialist historian KEITH FLETT
KEITH FLETT revisits debates about the name and structure of proposed working-class parties in the past
The summer saw the co-founders of modern communism travelling from Ramsgate to Neuenahr to Scotland in search of good weather, good health and good newspapers in the reading rooms, writes KEITH FLETT
