FRAN HEATHCOTE believes that while the the Chancellor outlined some positive steps, the government does not appreciate the scale of the cost-of-living crisis affecting working-class people, whose lives are blighted by endemic low pay
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Assange: truth on trial
As the extradition hearing against the Wikileaks founder begins today, TIM DAWSON looks at the background to this momentous clash between one whistleblower — and the US empire
A court artist sketch of Julian Assange
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is pouring €11.5bn into the Kiev swamp, blocking Trump’s peace plan, and pushing Nato right up to Russia’s borders – no matter if it costs hundreds of thousands of lives, warns SEVIM DAGDELEN
The 2025 Budget shores up the PM’s political position with headline-grabbing welfare U-turns, but with no improvements on offer to declining public services or living standards, writes MICHAEL BURKE
The unifying victory of Irish progressive forces in the presidential campaign should be a salutary lesson to the left in this country, argues MARY GRIFFITHS CLARKE
Martin Taylor, the hedge-fund multimillionaire who has poured millions into pushing Labour rightwards, helped finance Lucy Powell’s supposedly dissenting campaign — suggesting her victory was not the ‘soft-left’ rebellion some have claimed, says SOLOMON HUGHES
A November 15 protest in Mexico – driven by a right-wing social-media operation – has been miscast as a mass uprising against President Sheinbaum. In reality, the march was small, elite-backed and part of a wider attempt to sow unrest, argues DAVID RABY
WHEN Julian Assange emerges from the tunnel connecting Belmarsh prison with Woolwich Crown Court this morning it will be his first public appearance since May 2019. Then, Judge Deborah Taylor sentenced the Wikileaks founder to 50 weeks in prison for violating his bail conditions in 2012. Today starts in earnest his fight against extradition to the United States and a potential 175-year jail sentence.
The hearings promise to set precedent for the extraterritorial reach of US justice, and the potential prosecution of those who publish leaked US government information. Also likely are fresh revelations about the geopolitical reach of the Wikileaks saga.
Already, in a preparatory hearing last week it was alleged that an emissary for Donald Trump offered Assange a pardon. The suggested condition was that the Wikileaks founder rule out Russian involvement in the publication of Hilary Clinton’s emails. Their appearance, late in the 2016 US presidential election, proved timely for the Trump campaign. The White House has subsequently denied that it authorised the offer of a pardon.
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