While slashing welfare and public services, Labour’s spring statement delivers a bonanza for death-dealing bomb merchants. We now see the true and terrible face of austerity 2.0, writes MICHAEL BURKE
Farage, extra-parliamentary politics and the left
How has Farage repeatedly failed to get elected to Parliament, but always succeeded in influencing parliamentary politics? KEITH FLETT looks at the tools available to the right and left locked outside of Westminster

THE Guardian journalist Aditya Chakrabortty recently wrote a typically to-the-point piece about Nigel Farage, what Faragism really means and why it has an impact.
Farage is standing for an eighth time as a parliamentary candidate in Clacton, having lost on seven previous occasions. He has been elected as an MEP — but as part of a party list that did not specifically require voters to ponder if they wanted to back him personally.
It’s difficult to see Farage being overly keen on up to five years as MP for Clacton. It would significantly constrain his media and money-making roles — and his US jaunts.
More from this author

Facing economic turmoil, Jim Callaghan’s government rejected Tony Benn’s alternative economic strategy in favour of cuts that paved the way for Thatcherism — and the cuts-loving Labour of the present era, writes KEITH FLETT

Starmer’s slash-and-burn approach to disability benefits represents a fundamental break with Labour’s founding mission to challenge the idle rich rather than punish the vulnerable poor, argues KEITH FLETT

The formation of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900 marked the beginning of interconnected and contested strategies — parliamentary and industrial — seeking ways to advance working-class interests, writes KEITH FLETT

KEITH FLETT looks back 50 years to when the Iron Lady was elected Tory leader…
Similar stories

While Starmer courts BlackRock and backs genocide, leading to despair and historically low voter turnout, the vultures of the new populist right circle Britain’s crumbling institutions, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE

Beating Farage at the ballot box should be a top priority for the labour movement, argues CHARLEY ALLAN