Apart from a bright spark of hope in the victory of the Gaza motion, this year’s conference lacked vision and purpose — we need to urgently reconnect Labour with its roots rather than weakly aping the flag-waving right, argues KIM JOHNSON MP

LEN McCLUSKEY’s 11-year leadership of Unite covered a period of intense political turbulence — Conservative-Lib Dem “austerity,” Brexit, the rise and fall of Corbynism, a global pandemic.
Proud as he is of having helped build a strong “fighting-back” union, which he is confident will go from strength to strength under new leader Sharon Graham, he is best known to the wider public as a champion of the Labour left and the Jeremy Corbyn movement in particular.
Unite’s strategy is credited — including by many of its enemies, such as Peter Mandelson — with playing a key role both in the slight leftward shift of Labour under Ed Miliband from 2010 and the more dramatic turn to full-blooded socialism from 2015.

Morning Star editor BEN CHACKO reports from the start of Kunming’s Belt and Road media forum, where 200 journalists from 71 countries celebrated a new openness and optimism, forged by China’s enormous contribution to global development

Morning Star editor BEN CHACKO reports on TUC Congress discussions on how to confront the far right and rebuild the left’s appeal to workers