Once the bustling heart of Christian pilgrimage, Bethlehem now faces shuttered hotels, empty streets and a shrinking Christian community, while Israel’s assault on Gaza and the tightening grip of occupation destroy hopes of peace at the birthplace of Christ, writes Father GEOFF BOTTOMS
Why Jeremy Corbyn is right on state aid
Those who disagree with Corbyn and think we can achieve a progressive industrial policy inside the EU are suffering from conservative delusions and a poverty of vision, writes JONATHAN WHITE
Jeremy Corbyn (right) is given a tour by Managing Director David Shoesmith of Pulman Steel
After years hidden away, Oldham’s memorial to six local volunteers who died fighting fascism in the Spanish civil war has been restored to public view, marking both a victory for campaigners and a renewed tribute to the town’s proud International Brigade heritage, says ROB HARGREAVES
The June 2025 attacks on Iran have heightened the risk of a wider war, exposed the fiction of a rules-based international order and left ordinary Iranians trapped between external aggression and internal repression, says the Committee for Defence of Iranian People’s Rights
While pretending to seek peace, Europe is heading toward a collision course with Russia – using security guarantees, troop deployments, expropriation and censorship as tools, writes SEVIM DAGDELEN
A WWI hero, renowned ornithologist, medical doctor, trade union organiser and founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain all rolled in one. MAT COWARD tells the story of a life so improbable it was once dismissed as fiction
The long-term effects of chemical weapons such as Agent Orange mean that the impact of war lasts well beyond a ceasefire
READING George Peretz’s recent article in the Guardian (Four reasons Jeremy Corbyn is dead wrong about EU state aid, Guardian December 27 2018), I felt the existential weariness of Phil Connors, waking to find that yet again it’s Groundhog Day.
Peretz was writing in response to Jeremy Corbyn’s Guardian interview on December 21, in which the Labour leader said: ‘If you want to regenerate an economy, as we would want to do in government, then I don’t want to be told by somebody else that we can’t use state aid in order to be able to develop industry in this country.’
Peretz is very exercised about this quote as he believes it “makes no sense.” There has been an extensive and quite illuminating debate about state aid and government policy. You wouldn’t know it from Peretz’s article, which amounts to little more than the incantation of a litany of ageing straw men about the Lexit case.
For example, Peretz claims that the existence of state aid in Scandinavia and Germany proves that there is no problem with having an industrial strategy in the EU.
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