The Sanjeev Gupta, Lex Greensill and David Cameron affair

Once upon a time there was a young commodities trader called Sanjeev Gupta who wanted to do good in the world and to get rich while he was at it. He was very saddened by the harm being done to working class people in Britain by de-industrialisation and the relentless export of Britain’s manufacturing tradition … [Read more…]

The Sewell Report assessed

When the Government’s Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (CRED) published its latest report on racism in Britain, which, for the purposes of this article we shall call the Sewell Report after the chairman of the body, Tony Sewell, it caused instant uproar. The government was looking for some way of answering the Black Lives … [Read more…]

A critique of “Britain’s Road to Socialism” in the 21st century – The Programme of the Communist Party of Britain (CPB): PART ONE

To do justice to the task of analysing the latest edition of the CPB’s programme, it must be acknowledged that it has a place in the history of the British working-class movement that means it cannot be lightly or glibly brushed aside. The British Road to Socialism (BRS), first published in 1951, set the orientation … [Read more…]

More ‘reforms’ of the NHS, so many nails in the coffin

On 5 February 2021 Health Policy Insight published a leaked draft of a White Paper outlining plans for an NHS overhaul. The proposals, supposedly emanating from needs highlighted by the Covid pandemic, promised to remove bureaucracy from the NHS, to integrate health care with social care, and to give local authorities more control over provision … [Read more…]

Who are the Capitol rioters?

In the wake of the events at the Capitol and the election of Biden as President of the USA, a great variety of ‘left’ parties have found common cause. Their unity is based upon an incoherent and fundamentally flawed conception of the state and fascism. New unity Self-identifying ‘left wing’ groups all over Europe and … [Read more…]

Turmoil in Burma

On 1 February 2021 the government led by Aung San Suu Kyi was overthrown in a military coup. It is hard, however, to make sense of this coup as the civilian government in Myanmar was really only a figleaf behind which stood continuing military control of the country. One Burmese commentator wrote: “This coup doesn’t … [Read more…]

Yemen – US falters, Britain stops its ears

The Yemeni armed forces and their popular auxiliaries have now for six years stood firm against the US-backed and Saudi-led genocidal war against the Yemeni people. The national liberation forces, organised around the popular Ansarullah movement, have prevented every attempt to restore the Riyadh-backed puppet government of Mansour Hadi to power. In their courageous struggle … [Read more…]

Israel weaponises Covid

Zionism has opened up another front in its genocidal war of attrition against the Palestinians, deliberately withholding the Covid vaccine from Palestinians living on the West Bank and Gaza. This effectively weaponises the virus, adding biological warfare to Israel’s arsenal of oppression. By its refusal to offer vaccination to Palestinians, Israel is openly flouting international … [Read more…]

The ethnic cleansing of the West Bank

While the Zionists and their imperialist backers, including ‘liberal’ imperialists, have been searching every nook and cranny to look for signs of anti-semitism in the most unlikely of quarters, they studiously avert their gaze from the elephant in the room, namely, the daily and hourly crimes committed by the racist Zionist state of Israel against … [Read more…]