WHEN PRESIDENT-ELECT Donald Trump selects one of the most notorious climate sceptics, Scott Pruit, to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) you know the planet is in trouble. Pruitt, is part of the team waging a legal action by 28 states against the EPA to halt Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, an attempt to […]

DONALD TRUMP’S election on 8 November was welcomed in Moscow and Damascus. It was taken as the green light to wipe out what remains of the resistance to the rule of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. A final, unremitting offensive was launched on the remaining rebel-held eastern portion of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city. As before, this […]

ON 8 NOVEMBER Donald Trump rode a wave of anti-establishment anger to become the 45th president of the United States in the bitterest campaign of modern times. Trump used blatant distortions and outright lies to convince voters that only he was telling things as they are, only he recognised the sufferings of ordinary Americans, only […]

MOST PEOPLE imagine that their fuel comes from oil platforms far out at sea, or wells in the desert, far away places removed from daily life. Energy companies go to great lengths to paint this picture. But increasingly this is not the case. Many unfortunate enough to live around the controversial fracking sites know that […]

LEN MCCLUSKEY, head of Britain’s biggest union Unite which is also the Labour Party’s biggest donor, has resigned from his post and is standing for re-election. He last did this in 2013, three years into his first five-year term, to avoid embarrassing then Labour leader Ed Miliband with a major union election at the same […]

By Mike Black WORKERS AT the factory that makes Humbug sweets are striking against their Scrooge employer. GMB members at the Tangerine Confectionery site in York are in dispute with their bosses, who have been eroding conditions and making cuts to pension contributions. The 2016 pay offer was a measly 1 per cent increase backdated […]

RAIL UNION Aslef has announced that 87 per cent of its drivers at Southern Rail voted to strike. These strikes will take place in December and January, alongside an immediate and indefinite overtime ban. This is in addition to RMT strikes, on different dates, as guards continue their industrial action. Both unions are protesting the […]

CONSTRUCTION WORKERS at the Crossrail site in Tottenham Court Road took two days of unofficial strike action on 30 November and 1 December to defend Unite steward Terry Wilson. Employers Laing O’Rourke insisted Terry be transferred to another job while refusing to recognise him as a union negotiator. A further protest on 2 December was […]

THE PROJECT to develop “our own progressive patriotism”, as Owen Jones puts it, is seriously misplaced, indeed a fool’s errand since all the positive points he cites for inclusion are not national at all, but international, indeed universal, values. Another of the left’s most popular speakers, Clive Lewis, has also fallen for the idea that […]

THE PAPERS, TV and radio say Britain is under siege from immigrants. They blame them for higher taxes, crime, housing shortages, hospital waiting lists, cheap labour and terrorism. During the Brexit campaign, and since, this has reached fever pitch. There are two possible reasons for this. Only one of them can be true. The first is […]

PAUL NUTTALL’S threat to “replace the Labour Party and make Ukip the voice of patriotic Britain” seems to have thrown some Labour MPs into a panic. Dan Jarvis MP, for example, thinks that, “the Ukip fox is in the Labour henhouse and we have got to make a decision about what we want to do […]

MOMENTUM’S DECEMBER National Committee voted to hold a delegate-based conference in February 2017, and to launch campaigns in defence of migrants’ rights and against the expulsions and suspensions of Jeremy Corbyn supporters in the Labour Party. The Steering Committee and office staff remain unchanged. With the dark clouds of Brexit looming, and the transformation of […]

Trying to reclaim Brexit for the left is a distraction from opposing the Tory plans THERESA MAY and her three Brexiteers, David Davies, Boris Johnson and Liam Fox, are preparing for a devastating withdrawal from the European Union. Her “red, white and blue” Brexit will deny the UK full access to the single market, leading […]

SECRET COST-CUTTING plans could force hospitals, Accident & Emergency departments and wards to close, as stretched health workers struggle to cope. The Guardian and campaign group 38 Degrees reveal that NHS Trusts face a shortfall of £22 billion by 2020-21. Each of NHS England’s 44 “footprint” areas have been asked to submit a “sustainability and […]