The mass movement supporting Palestine represents potential political power that the left must now embrace as central to its strategy, writes HUGH LANNING, ahead of this Saturday’s Socialism or Barbarism day school in London
Latest editorial
Wes Streeting and the history of ‘the middle class’
Socialist historian KEITH FLETT unpacks the term currently being flung about by the Labour right as an insult and finds its popular association with ‘being a lefty’ is anything but assured in reality
Health Secretary Wes Streeting taking £53k from Tory-linked recruiter and outsourcer Peter Hearn’s OPD Group is a great example of how Labour’s rich donors shape policies targeting the poor – not their wealth, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
MAT COWARD recalls the communist and pacifist aristocrat whose commitment made a difference in the Spanish civil war, the Blitz and WWII Europe
Two months into Donald Trump’s second run as president, what can we glean about his policies towards Latin America so far, asks TIM YOUNG, ahead of this Saturday’s Socialism or Barbarism day school in London
Xenophobic hysteria over the statistically insignificant number of small-boat crossings deliberately conceals how capitalism manipulates population flows for profit — if we can explain that, we’ll beat the right, argues NICK WRIGHT
JOGINDER BAINS argues that the infamously cruel and calculated mass murder of Indians blocked into a public square and fired upon by the British Indian Army still faces a reckoning
The annual Fenner Brockway Lecture, hosted by Liberation, was delivered this year by Peter Mertens, Chair of the Workers’ Party of Belgium. STEVE BISHOP reflects on some of the highlights of Mertens’ address
WES STREETING has criticised “middle-class lefties” who he thinks are standing in the way of his efforts to privatise bits of the NHS should he get to be health secretary in the next government.
He might well find that the mostly not-middle-class Unison and RCN are even more formidable opponents.
Streeting will only fit the definition of a “lefty” if it’s one drawn up by Lee Anderson. However, his £90,000 desk job as an MP marks him out as definitively middle class. Social being defines consciousness, as any “middle-class lefty” could tell him.
More from this author
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…
The legacy of an 1820 conspiracy in revenge for Peterloo resonates down the ages, argues KEITH FLETT
Similar stories
The legacy of an 1820 conspiracy in revenge for Peterloo resonates down the ages, argues KEITH FLETT
The words composed by Sidney Webb: ‘To organise and maintain in Parliament and in the country a Political Labour Party’ were a crucial landmark in Labour’s journey to becoming a membership-based electoral presence, writes KEITH FLETT
Labour accused of betraying the NHS after Wes Streeting says the health service needs more private-sector involvement
