Following a fratricidal period for the left with Morales and Arce at loggerheads, right-wing, anti-MAS candidates obtained over 85 per cent of the votes cast in the latest general election, writes FRANCISCO DOMINGUEZ

ALL politics is, in the final analysis, local. Andrew Bowles was the Tory leader of Swale Borough Council on the North Kent coast until he was booted out by Faversham’s electors.
He achieved notoriety when the Tories briefly suspended him after he tweeted support for Stephen Yaxley-Lennon — alias “Tommy Robinson” — before reinstating him to lead the doomed Tory campaign in the council elections.
Faversham is a smallish town on the Thames estuary which has carried out a comprehensive cull of its council which has, with the exception of an occasional Labour or Lib Dem and a clutch of mostly progressive-minded independents, been a Conservative fiefdom ever since the brewing and shipbuilding town lost much of its industrial base.

Starmer sabotaged Labour with his second referendum campaign, mobilising a liberal backlash that sincerely felt progressive ideals were at stake — but the EU was then and is now an entity Britain should have nothing to do with, explains NICK WRIGHT

Deep disillusionment with the Westminster cross-party consensus means rupture with the status quo is on the cards – bringing not only opportunities but also dangers, says NICK WRIGHT

Holding office in local government is a poisoned chalice for a party that bases its electoral appeal around issues where it has no power whatsoever, argues NICK WRIGHT

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