All the evidence shows voters want Labour to shift to the left — but initial signs from Andy Burnham are worrying on that front, cautions DIANE ABBOTT
THE impact of the Covid pandemic on many capitalist economies has had the effect of masking and disrupting their increasingly synchronised economic cycle. Growth rates in the major economies (the US, Germany, Britain, France and Japan) were stagnant or declining in 2019 and almost certainly heading for recession. Covid plunged them into deep decline in the course of 2020.
Thus, a virus — rather than capitalism — is being held responsible for the steep downturn that might well have happened anyway. And the fact that the downturn was so extreme means that the recovery looks all the more impressive — in mathematical terms at least — when coming up so quickly from such a deep trough.
Yet the speed and extent of the recovery — funded by state spending — is such that the major central banks are now worried about inflation and its impact on economic stability and currency values.
Young Communist League general secretary GEORGINA ANDREWS says the far right are filling a vacuum created by Labour’s abandonment of working-class interests — we have to give our class a better offer
In part II of a serialisation of his new book, JOHN McINALLY explores how witch-hunting drives took hold in the Civil Service as the cold war emerged in the wake of WWII
Corbyn and Sultana’s ‘Your Party’ represents the first attempt at mass socialist organisation since the CPGB’s formation in 1921, argues DYLAN MURPHY
In the run-up to the Communist Party congress in November ROB GRIFFITHS outlines a few ideas regarding its participation in the elections of May 2026


