With Labour abandoning its base through welfare cuts and warmongering, a genuine progressive alternative is urgently needed but must avoid any whiff of Trump infatuation syndrome and national populism, argues ANDREW MURRAY
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The left, work and benefits. Eating the rich?
The left, work and benefits. Eating the rich?
Starmer’s slash-and-burn approach to disability benefits represents a fundamental break with Labour’s founding mission to challenge the idle rich rather than punish the vulnerable poor, argues KEITH FLETT
Ways of opposing the increasingly repressive measures from the British state against protesters will be discussed at the Arise Festival. BEN HAYES reports
The controversial legislation now threatens even more vulnerable people after the committee stage stripped away the key High Court safeguard that convinced many MPs to support it, writes Dr CAJETAN SKOWRONSKI
While the West celebrates Duterte’s extradition, the selective application of international law reveals deeper geopolitical motives behind the prosecution of a leader from a poor, exploited nation, argues KENNY COYLE
Despite appointing staunchly pro-Israel officials and approving billions in arms sales, the Trump administration faces a public increasingly viewing Palestine through a human rights lens, writes RAMZY BAROUD
Behind Starmer’s headline-grabbing abolition of NHS England lies a ruthless drive to centralise control so that cuts of £6.6 billion can be made — even if it means reducing cancer services and clinical staff, writes JOHN LISTER
China’s opening up empowers the world, and Sino-European co-operation especially holds immense potential, argues LIANG TAO, from infrastructure and industrial capacity to cultural exchange between two ancient civilisations
THE former Labour prime minister Harold Wilson argued that the labour movement owed more to Methodism than Marx. Socialists will dispute that but there is no doubt that in the 19th century a good deal of the imagery and words used in workers’ struggles came from the Bible. That is not a surprise when its considered that Marx’s Capital was not available in English until 1887.
One line from the Bible (Thessalonians) which was much used in the first decades of the 19th century and remains relevant now is “he that does not work neither shall he eat.”
It’s a view that is firmly lodged in the mind of right-wing social democracy. After Labour was elected in 1997, Tony Blair tried to push through welfare cuts — in that case to incapacity benefits — and suffered in May 1998 a rebellion of 80 Labour MPs.
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The formation of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900 marked the beginning of interconnected and contested strategies — parliamentary and industrial — seeking ways to advance working-class interests, writes KEITH FLETT
Modern Christmas as we know it, with its trees, dinner menu, cards and time off from work, only dates back to the early days of modern socialism as we know it, writes KEITH FLETT, checking in on Marx, Engels and the Chartists in the 1800s
KEITH FLETT uncovers the links between Dorset landowners, Caribbean plantations, slavery and the prosecution of trade unionists, revealing a darker side to the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ story
Normally in British politics, leftwingers defect right. Under Blair and now Starmer however, this trend seems to reverse, calling into question the ‘broad church’ that welcomes Tories and excludes socialists, writes KEITH FLETT