The UK Prime Minister may have the regal touch in northern England, but he’s been wrong-footed on the constitutional challenges posed by the Celtic Alliance of first ministers from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, argues KENNY MacASKILL
“FAIRY gold” in kids’ fables is magic money — a fortune that soon crumbles to be revealed as leaves, dust or worthless rubbish. More colloquially, it is precarious or illusory wealth that may vanish as swiftly as it is acquired. That was certainly the case with some speculators following the global banking crisis of 2007–2008.
The real victims, of course, were ordinary working-class families who lost their savings, their homes, their jobs and, sometimes, their lives as a consequence.
The crisis wasn’t some kind of aberration. Marx pointed out that while crises are endemic to capitalism, those involving what he called “fictitious capital,” a subset of financial capital, were central.
DOUG NICHOLLS says the parasitic finance markets must be challenged or another British government could be toppled
Dignity is important to all humans, argues the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School, but it does not come about automatically. In a less than perfect world, dignity can accompany suffering, but the collective dignity of working people is achieved through acting together to change the world.
Elon Musk says AI will make work optional. The world of abundance he predicts actually spells the end of the capitalist system, argues FAWZI IBRAHIM
The social base of the old Tory Party has disappeared as surely as that of Labour, argues ANDREW MURRAY – today’s right are the debased offspring of a capitalism that speculates without investing and profits without producing


