Transparency records reveal senior trade officials held dinners and strategy meetings with the notorious lobbying firm even as controversy over its Epstein links deepened, says SOLOMON HUGHES
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Labour & the local elections: the lessons of 2017 are key to reversing the disasters of 2019-21
Morning Star editor BEN CHACKO says the left needs to set its sights on majority support, however far off it might look
Pack your bags? Keir Starmer returns to his north London home last night
Starmer promised a reset after Labour’s dire electoral performance, but the government’s programme still falls far short of the bold action needed, says ANDY McDONALD MP
ANDREW DRAPER reports on the deliberate targeting and torture of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli state
Author Michael Rosen asked people how we confront a takeover by Reform. The Labour Party would do well to listen to the answers rather than shuffle more deckchairs on the Titanic, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
What began as a purported ‘anti-drugs mission’ has evolved into a permanent regional military operation, write ROGER D HARRIS and JOHN PERRY
KEITH FLETT looks at a post-election London
LABOUR’S local election debacle shows that the Tory advance in England has not been reversed by the pandemic. It has accelerated.
The appalling Hartlepool result – in four years the constituency has gone from voting 52 per cent Labour to 51 per cent Conservative – was accompanied by hundreds of council seat losses and, in key mayoral contests, the re-election of incumbent Tories with increased margins (Andy Street in the West Midlands ended up with an eight-point lead over Labour, that had been 0.8 points in 2017; in Tees Valley, Ben Houchen turned a knife-edge 51-49 per cent win over Labour then into a 73-27 landslide).
This was not the pattern everywhere, but it was the general pattern. Tory inroads into Leave-voting Labour areas seen in 2019 are redrawing the political map.
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In the run-up to the Communist Party congress in November ROB GRIFFITHS outlines a few ideas regarding its participation in the elections of May 2026
While Reform poses as a workers’ party, a credible left alternative rooted in working-class communities would expose their sham — and Corbyn’s stature will be crucial to its appeal, argues CHELLEY RYAN
From Gaza complicity to welfare cuts chaos, Starmer’s baggage accumulates, and voters will indeed find ‘somewhere else’ to go — to the Greens, nationalists, Lib Dems, Reform UK or a new, working-class left party, writes NICK WRIGHT