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

TOM NAIRN died recently aged 90. He was an important figure on the left from the early 1960s when he authored, with Perry Anderson, Origins of the Present Crisis (New Left Review 1964).
He was also notable for writing the Break-Up of Britain (1977) primarily on Scottish independence, and The Enchanted Glass (1988) on the monarchy.
While I certainly didn’t concur with his specific analysis on many occasions, his persistence as an opponent of the current British state was — and is — important.

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