43 Articles by:
Tom Blackburn is a Tribune columnist. He is a founding editor of New Socialist and lives in Greater Manchester.
The Labour leadership’s efforts to appear more Royalist than the Tories is a symptom of their sycophantic politics – if you won’t utter a critical word about the royal family, you’re not serious about challenging power.
Allegations of corruption in the Caller Report are grim, but Labour’s failure to oppose the takeover of Liverpool by an equally corrupt Tory government threatens to plunge a left-wing heartland into years of right-wing policies.
The emerging generation is the most left-wing in decades, driven by a desire for fundamental social change – but while they flocked to Jeremy Corbyn, Keir Starmer’s war against the Left has turned them away.
Elected on a promise to modernise France, Emmanuel Macron has revealed what the political centre looks like in practice – a war on workers, authoritarian demagogy and a further emboldening of the far-right.
Labour’s opposition to tax increases for major corporations isn’t popular or even good economics – but it is a signal that the days when the party challenged big business interests are over.
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.
For Keir Starmer, scrapping the Community Organising Unit and attacking party democracy are part of a single project: to turn Labour back into a party of the establishment.
Before Covid-19, the Tories promised to ‘level up’ Britain’s post-industrial regions – but new research shows they have been hammered by the pandemic and government support has been thin on the ground.
Anneliese Dodds’ speech was not as bad as advertised – but it demonstrated the fundamental problem with Labour’s new leadership: it is more concerned with appearing respectable to elites than with representing popular interests.
When teachers called for schools to close in the interests of public health, Labour should have backed them. Instead, Starmer and the frontbench ignored trade unions – and got the issue dead wrong.
2020 has been a difficult year for the socialist movement, with significant defeats in many countries – but the Left’s answers to the crises we face remain far more compelling than any offered by the Right or Centre.
As the Labour leadership drives members out of the party and damages ties to trade unions, they have turned to wealthy donors to fill the funding gap – but so far the rich seem quite happy with the Tories.
The suspension of the chair and co-secretary of Bristol West CLP over a motion supporting Jeremy Corbyn is a calculated attack on Labour members’ rights and party democracy.
Nigel Farage’s new anti-lockdown party aims to capitalise on the economic hardship facing millions due to the government’s Covid-19 failures. The Left must speak to these concerns – or risk him gaining ground.
The government intends to wage a sustained attack on human rights in the coming years – and the Spy Cops Bill shows that we can’t rely on Labour’s leadership to fight back. It’s time to build grassroots resistance.
From BooHoo to warehouses and meatpacking factories, the dire working conditions of modern Britain have helped to drive Covid-19 – but you won’t hear much about it from the government or media.
With the objective of a mass membership party now abandoned, Labour is returning to its recent past as a Westminster political machine – but members can still have influence, if they organise.
Liberals increasingly realise that astronomical inequalities are tearing democracy apart – but won’t support figures like Corbyn or Sanders because they can’t countenance the radical change required to save it.
Keir Starmer promises to unite the party and appear prime ministerial while sticking by Labour’s left-wing policies. But if elected, he would be forced to choose between these priorities – and it’s clear which one would lose out.
After decades of attacks on trade unions and workers’ rights, inequality in Britain is soaring. But in this election, finally, workers have a chance to vote for a government that would empower them.