The Great Cronyism Coverup
Matt Hancock broke the law over outsourced PPE contracts, but the problem goes well beyond Covid – in fact, almost half of the UK’s top 50 corporations have connections with a current MP.
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Raven Hart is co-founder of the Bristol Cooperative Alliance, an organisation that aims to promote a decentralised economy that empowers local communities and facilitates democratic self-determination.
Matt Hancock broke the law over outsourced PPE contracts, but the problem goes well beyond Covid – in fact, almost half of the UK’s top 50 corporations have connections with a current MP.
In the 1980s, a virus epidemic ripped through Britain – with Tory government neglect leading to countless unnecessary deaths. To mark LGBT History Month, we remember the AIDS Crisis.
A decade of austerity has decimated the NHS, and the government’s white paper isn’t going to undo the damage – we need to organise the fightback in our communities and workplaces.
Today’s Left has popular policies, growing institutions, and answers to the fundamental crises of our age. 2019’s defeat was a temporary setback – it’s time to be confident in our ability to shape the future.
Writer and academic Ed Rooksby passed away last week at the age of just 46. We republish one of his final in-depth interviews – and remember his contributions to socialist thought in Britain.
Commentators hail the Paris Agreement and UN Sustainable Development Goals as solutions to climate change – but as long as they shy away from challenging capitalism, they will never succeed.
France was once the heartland of socialism, but today its left is on the retreat and its far-right emboldened. The roots of this malaise lie in François Mitterrand’s turn from radical reform to neoliberal austerity in the 1980s.
The UK government’s pandemic failings resulted in 120,000 deaths and greater economic damage than any other developed nation – but as they plan reopening, the media seems prepared to let them escape the blame.
An estimated 3.5 million people in the UK are in council tax arrears – more than half of them as a result of the pandemic. It’s the latest Covid economic fallout that threatens to widen inequality.
The Court of Appeal has blocked a plan by Manchester City Council to build a 440-space car park on a site local activists are campaigning to turn into a green space – it could mark a turning point in the struggle for a city that works for all.
Last week, Spain imprisoned rapper Pablo Hasél for insulting the monarchy. It’s just the latest episode in a broad attack on progressive politics carried out by the country’s politicised right-wing judiciary.
A new report from Tory MPs and a right-wing think tank recommends deregulation to fix the North’s ills – but turning things over to the market has never solved the region’s problems.
Labour’s recovery bonds are a retail offer masquerading as something radical – their real beneficiaries will be those with significant savings at a time when many can’t keep their heads above water.
A film adaptation of Jerzy Kosiński’s Holocaust book, ‘The Painted Bird,’ is a bracing but humane treatment of what ‘modern’ Europe descended into in the 1940s – and a reminder of what could happen again.
The new series by Adam Curtis has elicited eye-rolling among many on the left – but despite its critics, ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ is the BBC filmmaker’s most radical work in years.
Centrist commentators damn the Left based on 2019’s election defeat, but the result under Corbyn in 2017 was Labour’s best in recent memory – and provides a far more replicable model today than the Tony Blair era.
To mark LGBT History Month, we remember Allan Roberts – a pioneering gay Labour MP who shrugged off media slander about his personal life to become one of the most effective socialist politicians of his generation.
Britain’s government is staunchly refusing to comment on India’s farmer protests and Modi’s brutal crackdown – but British Asian communities are organising and speaking out in its place.
In a blow to gig economy profiteers, today’s Supreme Court ruling states that Uber drivers are entitled to minimum wage and paid holidays. It’s a victory for workers – and everyone who supports decent working conditions.
While Israel rolls out Covid vaccines at world-beating speed, Palestinians are forced to wait. This is not an aberration – but the reality of parallel worlds enforced by a decades-long occupation.