Labour Party
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Purge of Jeremy Corbyn Voters Unmasks Britain’s Labour Party By Jonathan Cook
If Corbyn wins, it would be the first time in living memory that the UK has had a Labour leader who is actually of the left. It is a prospect terrifying our supposedly liberal media, including the BBC and most of the Guardian’s senior staff, from Polly Toynbee to Jonathan Freedland. Continue reading
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What does the “Jeremy Corbyn phenomenon” represent? By Chris Marsden and Julie Hyland
A new “one member, one vote” system for the leadership contest was meant to help consolidate the party’s right-wing course, based on the assumption that the electorate—or, more properly, the narrow social layer to which all the parties pitch their rotten wares—shared the party’s concerns and prejudices. This appears to have backfired. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Whitewash – The Guardian Readers’ Editor Responds On Jeremy Corbyn
As we have seen, high-profile Guardian journalists and others have been lined up to direct a flood of ‘disaster’ warnings, dismissals, derision, disbelief and mockery at Corbyn, and only Corbyn. Nothing remotely comparable has been directed at Burnham, Cooper or Kendall. This is a spectacular example of bias. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Fantasy Politics – ‘Corbyn’s Morons’ And The ‘Sensible Approach’
One might think that, in discussing the popularity of Corbyn’s leadership bid, a rational media would give serious attention to the visions, strategies and success of Podemos, Syriza and the SNP. For example, we can imagine in-depth interviews with Iglesias and Colau on Corbyn’s prospects. We can imagine discussions of how a weakening of the… Continue reading
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SA(S)R Syndrome Moves On By S. Artesian
Short-Attention-Span-Radicalism has quickly recovered from its setback in Greece, finding solace in its own unique spin on Joe Hill’s supposed last words– “Don’t mourn, Don’t organize; Forget, Ignore, Repeat.” The SARs brigade made up of VIBs; SIPs; near, neo, quasi, democratic, semi, hemi, demi, erratic, mo, po, po-mo socialists is done sitting shiva for Greece… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Unfree Elections – The Corporate Media, UK General Election And Predictable Outcomes
Imagine this thought experiment. Consider how a general election might turn out if the media spectrum ran the whole gamut from the right – the BBC, Guardian and Independent, for example – to the hard right (the Mail, Sun, Express and so on). Some readers might object that the BBC, Guardian and the Independent are… Continue reading
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UK: Labour Party targets unemployed youth for benefit withdrawal By Joe Mount
The opposition Labour Party will end the entitlement to unemployment benefits for those aged between 18 and 21 if it comes to power, leader Ed Miliband announced. The punitive policy means that youth without A-levels or equivalent qualifications would lose their income unless they enrol in vocational training courses. Only those with qualifications would retain… Continue reading
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The Labour government was to blame for the NHS’s biggest disgrace – why should we listen to them now? By Caroline Molloy
The latest ex-Blair advisor to lambast the NHS for being ‘slow’ to adopt privatisation is Paul Corrigan. But his past hastiness had a little-noted role in the NHS’s darkest episode. If you were going to release a report arguing for the UK’s health system to become more like that of the United States, you probably… Continue reading
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Labour embraces UK Independence Party’s right-wing nationalism By Jordan Shilton
The victory by the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in the May European elections in Britain and its strong gains in local elections have prompted the Labour Party to move even further to the right and adopt many of UKIP’s core positions. Continue reading
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Labour support collapses in the polls – socialist policies needed! By Daniel Morley
Some recent opinion polls have put the Tories ahead of Labour for the first time since 2012. Does this mean that the public has made an historic shift to the right, at a time when the right wing is presiding over possibly the biggest ever fall in living standards and rise in inequality? Is the… Continue reading
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Labour turn spotlight on GP shortages By Caroline Molloy
Yesterday Miliband pledged a GP appointment for all within 48 hours, today Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham visits inner-city GP practices facing the axe. Continue reading
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Will Labour defend the NHS from the EU/US trade deal? By Linda Kaucher
Andy Burnham and John Healey’s statments on the risks to the NHS of the trade deal between the EU and the US seem at odds. Labour should be speaking clearly for the NHS. There is increasingly informed public concern about the relationship between the NHS and the huge US/EU ‘free trade’ agreement, the Transatlantic Trade… Continue reading
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A moment of honesty is required – New Labour began the dismantling of our NHS By Kailash Chand
It is universally accepted that the creation of the National Health Service is the single greatest achievement of the Labour party. The neglect of the NHS was a principal contributor to the downfall of the last Conservative Government and it was a major issue that helped New Labour mobilise mass political support for a landslide… Continue reading
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Labour and UK Independence Party debate in Manchester By Julie Hyland and Paul Mitchell
Claims that the European Union (EU) represents a mechanism for overcoming the national antagonisms that twice in the twentieth century plunged the Europe into war are a fraud. Draconian austerity measures in country after country, coupled with its utilisation of the Western-backed putsch in Kiev to instigate war-mongering against Russia, prove that the EU is… Continue reading
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UK Labour Party proposes compulsory cheap-labour scheme By Danny Richardson
Labour Party Leader Ed Miliband has launched Labour’s Jobs Guarantee scheme, aimed at young people age 18 to 25 who have been unemployed for 12 months or more. The scheme will last the lifetime of the next parliament if Labour wins the 2015 election. Those enrolled will be compelled to stay for a six-month period… Continue reading
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Video: Which way forward for Labour?
We publish here recordings and a report of a recent debate at the Cambridge Marxist Society, where Adam Booth, editor of www.socialist.net, Jon Lansman, editor of Left Futures, and Matthew Doyle, former political director to Tony Blair, discuss the future of the Labour Party. Continue reading
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UK Labour pledges itself to legally binding savage cuts By Julie Hyland
The United Kingdom’s opposition Labour Party has pledged to introduce laws to enforce “tough” fiscal rules if it wins the election in 2015. Continue reading
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Groping in the Dark: Jack Straw and the Irrelevance of the Left By Carl Rowlands
No-one knows exactly how many people have moved to the UK from Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and the Baltic countries. Despite this, former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has said that immediately admitting workers from the 2004 EU accession countries into the UK labour market was, in his words, a ‘mistake.’ Blithely untroubled by… Continue reading
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Britain’s poorest summonsed to court to pay council tax arrears By Allison Smith
In London’s Labour Party-controlled Southwark borough alone, more than 5,000 residents were summonsed to court in October and forced to pay past due council tax plus court fees. In the Labour-controlled borough of Brent, 3,500 summonses were issued to the poorest residents. This is being repeated across the country. The Citizen’s Advice Bureau in Hull… Continue reading
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UK Labour seeks to outdo Conservatives with right-wing policies By Jordan Shilton
After a reorganisation of Labour’s shadow cabinet, which included new appointments to the positions of shadow education minister and shadow minister for work and pensions, party leaders publicly endorsed virulently right-wing politics. These positions were given by party leader Ed Miliband to Tristram Hunt and Rachel Reeves. Continue reading
The New Dark Age 