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
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Talk of national governments and new parties shows the desperation of those opposed to a radical Labour government
by Richard Burgon
The original ‘gang of four’ pictured in 1981 (left to right) Bill Rodgers, David Owen, Roy Jenkins and Shirley Williams
Despite new European arrests, the evidence presented so far fails to explain the sabotage of the undersea pipelines – and veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s allegations of US responsibility cannot be easily dismissed, writes ROGER McKENZIE
Groups are urging the US government to secure the 16-year old’s release as his mental and physical health decline dramatically after nine months inside Ofer prison, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
MAT COWARD tells the story of the eccentric founder of a short-lived but striking experiment in ‘vital democracy,’ who became best known for giving away his estate to the nation
As figures from Tucker Carlson to Nigel Farage flirt with neofascist rhetoric and mainstream leaders edge toward authoritarianism through war and repression, the conditions that once nurtured Hitlerism re-emerge — yet anti-war and anti-imperialist sentiments are also burgeoning anew, writes ANDREW MURRAY
As President Javier Milei is set to unveil a radical rollback of Argentina’s labour laws, unions warn of an unprecedented assault on workers’ rights, says BERT SCHOUWENBURG
SUMMER is often described as silly season in politics and this summer two very silly ideas have come to the fore with much talk of a new party to the right of the modern Labour Party and the formation of a so-called “national government.”
Neither phenomenon is new. The formation of the SDP breakaway from the Labour Party by Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, David Owen and Bill Rodgers in 1981 was an anti-socialist betrayal that helped to gift the 1980s to Thatcherism and her brutal anti-working-class policies.
Ramsay MacDonald’s formation of a “national government” with the Conservatives, Liberals, Liberal Nationals and so-called “National Labour” in 1931 was done to push through austerity politics, guaranteeing that his name went down in history as a byword for betrayal.
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STEPHEN ARNELL examines whether Starmer is a canny strategist playing a longer game or heading for MacDonald’s Great Betrayal, tracing parallels between today’s rightward drift and the 1931 crisis
As heavy industry flees and public-sector strikes paralyse the nation, the French leader’s increasingly desperate attempts to rule without a majority reveal the deep crisis at the heart of European liberal democracy, writes KEVIN OVENDEN