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MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
The Socialist Ideal in the Labour Party: from Attlee to Corbyn
reviewed by GAVIN O'TOOLE
New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
JOHN GREEN relishes photography that unfolds a longstanding and poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production that panders – if inadvertently – to Western prejudice against China
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a history that excavates the enormous role played by agricultural workers in recent times
ALEX HALL recommends a book that places empirical evidence at the heart of understanding racism
The Socialist Ideal in the Labour Party: From Attlee to Corbyn
Martin R Beveridge
Merlin Press £14.99
IT IS easy to forget in more pessimistic moments — and Keir Starmer is banking on us doing so — that despite Labour’s recent forced march back towards the right, since 2015 the party has been living through one of the most ideologically fecund revivals in its history.
While the demonisation of Jeremy Corbyn by his successor and parliamentary partners in crime sowed the disunity that Labour’s right then employed as the chicken-and-egg narrative to unseat him, the former leader achieved something remarkable.
Corbyn was able to restore social democratic ideals and ethical socialist principles, invigorated by the participatory enthusiasm of 21st-century social movements, to the heart of Labour’s identity — something Starmer has been singularly unwilling to build upon.
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GAVIN O’TOOLE applauds an analysis of culture that explains why political conflicts today are focused more on values and identity than the economy and social questions
GAVIN O’TOOLE observes that the call for a new international framework for conflict mediation is fatally marred by a partisan position on the Isreali-Gazan conflict
