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Has Western Democracy Now Failed?
Keir Starmer’s determination to use his refusal to alleviate child poverty as the issue with which to demonstrate his macho Thatcherite credentials, has provided one of those moments when blurred...
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Torture The Evidence
In his 1973 essay ‘The Coup in Chile,’ Ralph Milband warned that left-wing movements which did not draw the right lessons from the overthrow of Salvador Allende ‘may well be preparing new Chiles for...
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Starmer Is Selling Labour To Big Business. In Power He Will Do The Same
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...
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No New Cash For Health Services When They Take Over Mental Health Callouts
Health services will not get any new funding when they take over responsibility for mental health emergencies from police as soon as next month, NHS England has confirmed to openDemocracy. The...
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Climate Politics and Culture Wars
I try not to get dragged into local British politics here: there’s no point in dwelling on private grief. But sometimes local British politics throws up moments that resonate more widely. We had one of...
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A Brief Neocolonial History of the Five UN Security Council Permanent Members
One of the underlying principles of the UN Charter is the protection of the sovereign rights of states. Yet since 1945, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (Soviet Union/Russia,...
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Austerity Is Part of a Plan to Privatize the NHS
(Image: Mark Ramsay) In the UK today, it’s hard to avoid the sense that everything is falling apart. Rents and bills are soaring, real wages are falling, and public services are crumbling. Homelessness...
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What Next For The Weakened British Left?
For four solid decades, the UK has been run according to an economic orthodoxy that claims to trade equality and sustainability for prosperity and dynamism. The result is that we have neither. Instead,...
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How Britain Crushed Democracy in Iran
19 August marks an ignominious anniversary: the 70th anniversary of the coup against Mohammed Mossadegh and the snuffing out of Iranian democracy. Popularly remembered largely as a CIA-led operation,...
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Labour Turns Its Back on Workers’ Rights
By watering down its commitment to workers’ rights, the Labour Party is abandoning its last truly transformative policy – and consigning millions to a future of workplace insecurity. Yesterday’s...
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If The RSPB Can’t Call Out Government Lies, Democracy Is Under Threat
UK democracy has a serious problem. No one, not even an organisation with 1.2 million members, is allowed to call government ministers liars when they tell lies. On Wednesday, the RSPB, the charity for...
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UK May Block Assange’s Attendance at Appeal to European Court of Human Rights
Should he be deported from the U.K., Julian Assange, the Australian publisher of WikiLeaks, faces up to 175 years in a U.S. prison on charges related to his release of information that revealed U.S....
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The Remembrance of a Death: A Contemporary Critique of the British Monarchy
On September 8th this year, members of the British Royal Family marked the one year anniversary since the death of Queen Elizabeth II. King Charles, Queen Camilla, and Balmoral Estate staff attended a...
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The NHS Doesn’t Need Reform – It Needs Funding
When the NHS was founded, it was a central part of the UK’s post-war social contract. Now, it is struggling to perform, and there are increasing calls for so-called ‘reform,’ which is often a euphemism...
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So Far, Britain’s Employers Have Been Winning the Class War Over Inflation
The question of who pays for inflation is fundamentally a distributional question. In other words, it’s about class. When prices increase, that additional cost has to be absorbed by someone, whether by...
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US Surveillance Firm’s Charm Offensive to UK Councils and Police Forces
A US tech firm has been privately lobbying UK councils and police forces to scale up their surveillance using an AI-powered platform used against Black Lives Matter protesters in the wake of George...
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Public Faces Down Government Assault on Freedom of Expression
From Truro to Carlisle, 252 members of public escape arrest after replicating ‘contempt of court’ action If Michael Tomlinson KC, the Solicitor General, hoped that prosecuting Trudi Warner, a 68 year...
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UK Labour: Why Starmer’s Growing Authoritarianism Should Be Ringing Alarm Bells
Every so often, the UK Labour prime minister James Callaghan once remarked, there is a sea change in politics. This happened in 1979, when British voters lost faith in Callaghan’s Labour party and put...
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UK Police Targeted Me Because I Told The Truth About Turkey’s Attacks On The...
The UK has one of the most draconian detention powers of any country in Europe. British police are able to question anyone at the country’s borders, without the right to silence or any formal charge,...
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Israel-Palestine War: UK Leaders Are Paving The Way For Ethnic Cleansing In Gaza
Responses from Starmer, Sunak, Braverman and others are especially reckless because of the horrifying language already being used by senior Israelis. In moments of crisis, it’s the job of a statesman...
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