Robinson successfully defended his school from closure, fought for the unification of the teaching unions, mentored future trade union leaders and transformed teaching at the Marx Memorial Library, writes JOHN FOSTER

IN the Westminster world of cross-play politics, Keir Starmer’s embrace of the corporate land bankers and construction firms is garlanded with a pledge to “back the builders, not the blockers.”
On the other side of the gangway Rishi Sunak — no less a corporate crony of big business and the banks — is a new-born partisan of the pastoral.
Responding to the wave of nimbyism that has sprung up wherever the construction monopolies take advantage of his government’s planning and housebuilding regime, the Prime Minister aims to shore up the Tory vote with a pledge to protect the green belt and slacken the housebuilding targets his government has imposed on local councils.

Holding office in local government is a poisoned chalice for a party that bases its electoral appeal around issues where it has no power whatsoever, argues NICK WRIGHT

From Gaza complicity to welfare cuts chaos, Starmer’s baggage accumulates, and voters will indeed find ‘somewhere else’ to go — to the Greens, nationalists, Lib Dems, Reform UK or a new, working-class left party, writes NICK WRIGHT

There is no doubt that Trump’s regime is a right-wing one, but the clash between the state apparatus and the national and local government is a good example of what any future left-wing formation will face here in Britain, writes NICK WRIGHT

European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde sees Trump’s many disruptions as an opportunity to challenge the dollar’s ‘exorbitant privilege’ — but greater Euro assertiveness will also mean greater warmongering and militarism, warns NICK WRIGHT