SOLOMON HUGHES recommends Sunjeev Sahota’s recent novel set in a trade union election campaign for its fresh approach to what unites and divides workers, but wishes the union backdrop was truer to life
THIS THIRD week of February 2025 will go down in history as a turning point in world affairs.
The post-WWII system, extended 35 years ago with the end of the cold war, is dead. It was on life support long before Donald Trump resumed the presidency of the US. He has moved with whirlwind speed over the last month to rip up a dying order of multinational capitalist institutions through which the US exercised hegemony over allies and domination over foes.
Now resuscitation efforts have stopped. Anyone with any sense has called time of death.
As US hegemony crumbles and Trump becomes ever more unpredictable, European powers cling to the pact’s militarist agenda in a bid to disguise their own increasing irrelevance, writes CHRIS NINEHAM
In the first half of a two-part article, PETER MERTENS looks at how Nato’s €800 billion ‘Readiness 2030’ plan serves Washington’s pivot to the Pacific, forcing Europeans to dismantle social security and slash pensions to fund it



