FRAN HEATHCOTE believes that while the the Chancellor outlined some positive steps, the government does not appreciate the scale of the cost-of-living crisis affecting working-class people, whose lives are blighted by endemic low pay
Back to the future for Britain and the EU?
Amid shortages of certain foodstuffs, voices have been raised that a return to the EU might be desirable. BERT SCHOUWENBURG warns that the policies of the European suprastate are no panacea for Britain’s problems
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is pouring €11.5bn into the Kiev swamp, blocking Trump’s peace plan, and pushing Nato right up to Russia’s borders – no matter if it costs hundreds of thousands of lives, warns SEVIM DAGDELEN
The 2025 Budget shores up the PM’s political position with headline-grabbing welfare U-turns, but with no improvements on offer to declining public services or living standards, writes MICHAEL BURKE
The unifying victory of Irish progressive forces in the presidential campaign should be a salutary lesson to the left in this country, argues MARY GRIFFITHS CLARKE
Martin Taylor, the hedge-fund multimillionaire who has poured millions into pushing Labour rightwards, helped finance Lucy Powell’s supposedly dissenting campaign — suggesting her victory was not the ‘soft-left’ rebellion some have claimed, says SOLOMON HUGHES
A November 15 protest in Mexico – driven by a right-wing social-media operation – has been miscast as a mass uprising against President Sheinbaum. In reality, the march was small, elite-backed and part of a wider attempt to sow unrest, argues DAVID RABY
LONG queues of coaches and cars trying to get onto Dover ferries and television pictures of empty shelves in British supermarkets have prompted renewed calls for Britain to rejoin the European Union.
Social media has been full of messages from enraged consumers blaming Brexit for their inability to buy tomatoes and cucumbers that are usually readily available all year round and heaping ridicule on the hapless Secretary of State for Environment, Therese Coffey for suggesting that they eat turnips instead.
Turnips aside, the claim that Brexit is responsible for the shortages is difficult to sustain. As stated in a previous issue of the Star, the principal reason for the paucity of fresh produce is British farmers’ understandable reluctance to grow crops at a loss, because of soaring energy bills combined with the supermarkets’ refusal to buy from them at a price that would at least cover their costs.
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Global South governments’ sovereignty and ability to decide future economic policy are severely compromised by signing free trade agreements, whose terms are heavily weighted in favour of the already wealthy countries of the global North, writes BERT SCHOUWENBURG
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