Danni Perry’s flag display at the Royal Opera House sparked 182 performers to sign a solidarity letter that cancelled the Tel Aviv Tosca production, while Leonardo DiCaprio invests in Tel Aviv hotels, reports LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
Starmer drama: This time it’s personal
The Labour leader’s glowing tribute to a management-organised protest by match workers at Bryant & May shows his ignorance of labour movement history, writes historian of the matchwomen LOUISE RAW
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer (left) and (right) the matchwomen
YANA PETTICREW explains what’s behind the strike and how the entire sector rests on super-exploiting an unorganised workforce
STEPHEN ARNELL casts a critical eye over the sudden rash of challenges to the two-party system on both sides of the Atlantic, noting that today’s performative populist politics sadly lacks Roosevelt’s progressive ‘Bull Moose’ vision of the early 20th century
BILL KIDD MSP says increasing Britain’s nuclear arsenal at this time is dangerous and expensive folly
ROGER McKENZIE asks whether the US’s shift to targeting everyone at once will instil greater co-operation among rising powers
IT’S A surreal experience watching the leader of the opposition put a match to the research to which you’ve dedicated a lot of your adult life — and use your own phrases to do it.
That’s what happened a few days ago when Keir Starmer and some Labour MPs put out a tweet celebrating the 150th anniversary of an 1871 protest against a proposed match tax, calling it a collective victory by workers which had “galvanised” other factory workers.
It’s hard to overstate how wrong he has got this; levels of error which raise questions not just about his team and their due diligence processes, but Starmer’s understanding of the events which created his own party.
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