From London’s holly-sellers to Engels’s flaming Christmas centrepiece, the plum pudding was more than festive fare in Victorian Britain, says KEITH FLETT
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The ‘progressive centre’ is a gift to the far right
With the soft left fixated on fighting socialist allies rather than the rising threat of fascism, Brexit is Corbyn’s chance to set a new agenda, writes CHARLEY ALLAN
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
From a lockdown digital project to a vital tool for class solidarity, ROBERT POOLE and HENRY FOWLER reflect on half-a-decade of struggle
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
LABOUR’S very own Lord Voldemort has returned. “He who cannot be named” — the party actually suspends members who use “Blairite” as an insult — is back. And with typical contempt for popular opinion, our ex-PM has put blocking Brexit at the top of his agenda.
Busy setting up shiny new offices near Westminster, Tony Blair told the New Statesman last week that leaving the EU “can be stopped if the British people decide that, having seen what it means, the pain-gain cost-benefit analysis doesn’t stack up.”
But of course, no-one can see what Brexit “means” until it actually happens. Blair just wants to scare us into a second referendum — something even the majority of Remainers are against, according to YouGov polling.
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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
A bizarre on-air rant by Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s head of counter-terrorism, shines a light on the present state of transatlantic relations, says NICK WRIGHT
