Andy Burnham could learn a few lessons from a previous Labour government in the pre-privatisation era on how to tackle water shortages, writes KEITH FLETT
IN THE new year, internal Labour Party politics and the culture war everyone denies fighting will be the chief preoccupation of the left.
While politicians and political commentators continue to struggle over the national questions raised by Brexit, the Scottish independence referendum before it, and the recent election defeat, they will try to make sense of it all by continuing to argue in pointless culture war terms about patriotism, progressive or otherwise billed, conceptions of internationalism and so on.
It was, to a degree, a failure by the political class to make the EU referendum result fit into culture war terms and spend the last three years creating the culture war that led so many to obviously foolish positions in the first place.
To govern again, we must first earn back the confidence of the people who founded our movement
BEN CHACKO says in different ways, the centenary of the General Strike and that of Fidel Castro’s birth point to priority tasks for the British left in the coming year
Your Party can become an antidote to Reform UK – but only by rooting itself in communities up and down the country, says CLAUDIA WEBBE
Investing the £75 billion slated for defence spending on a green new deal, healthcare and education would create jobs and help communities far more than weapons spending, argues UCU general secretary JO GRADY



