What has happened to Britain’s opposition Labour Party under Keir Starmer? The familiar adage “follow the money” helps make sense of the party’s policy shifts ever further rightwards. Labour plumbed new depths earlier this month when it conceded that, in power, it would maintain the government’s cap on child benefit, restricting financial help to the first […]
On a trip to Japan in 2014, approaching the third anniversary of the Fukishima nuclear disaster, Noam Chomsky told an audience that: ‘Governments regard their own citizens as their main enemy.’ What he meant was that states do not wish their own populations to know and understand the details of government policies, for fear of […]
What does it mean to be antisemitic in modern Britain? The answer seems ever more confusing. We have reached the seemingly absurd point that a political leader famed for his anti-racism, a rock star whose most celebrated work focuses on the dangers of racism and fascism, and a renowned film maker committed to socially progressive […]
Last month, the United Nation’s environment agency issued arguably its starkest warning yet about the climate crisis. The failure by governments around the world to cut carbon emissions means there is ‘no credible pathway to 1.5C in place’. Limiting the rise of global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels was the international agreement at COP21, […]
Guardian columnist George Monbiot is, by his own admission, a very busy man. Dedicated as he is to issues such as soil loss, he has yet to find the time to throw his weight behind the campaign to free Julian Assange. When thousands of supporters poured into London from all over the world at the […]
A long-delayed report by Martin Forde QC into “factionalism” within the British Labour Party during Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure was finally made public this week, more than two years after a leaked internal report detailed efforts by senior staff to undermine the former leader. The Forde Inquiry largely confirms the disturbing picture presented by the earlier […]
The local authority election results earlier this month in the UK were as bleak as expected for Boris Johnson’s government, with the electorate ready to punish the ruling party both for its glaring corruption and rocketing high-street prices. A few weeks earlier, the police fined Johnson – the first of several such penalties he is […]
[This is the transcript of a talk I gave to Bath Friends of Palestine on 25 February 2022.] Since I arrived with my family in the UK last summer, I have been repeatedly asked: “Why choose Bristol as your new home?” Well, it certainly wasn’t for the weather. Now more than ever I miss Nazareth’s […]
“Why is Boris Johnson making false claims about Starmer and Savile?” runs a headline in the news pages of the Guardian. It is just one of a barrage of indignant recent stories in the British media, rushing to the defence of the opposition leader, Sir Keir Starmer. The reason? Last week the British prime minister, […]
Labour leader Keir Starmer hoped he would hammer the final nails into the coffin of support for his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn and his left-wing policies at the party’s annual conference in Brighton this week. But delegates had other ideas. With a resounding slap to Starmer’s face, the conference voted in favour of a motion declaring […]
