TUC general secretary PAUL NOWAK speaks to the Morning Star’s Berny Torre about the increasing frustration the trade union movement feels at a government that promised change, but has been too slow to bring it about

RISHI SUNAK takes the gold for brazen hypocrisy. He joined the chorus of denouncing “violent, criminal behaviour” at the weekend. He failed to mention that racist mobs attacking mosques and asylum accommodation were raising his own slogan: “Stop the boats.”
Keir Starmer spent last week spouting similar sanitising language and likening far-right mobs to “football hooligans.” The proper comparisons are with lynch mobs, pogroms and fascist squads.
He was forced to shift a little on Sunday, at least mentioning the far right and racism. But with mosques attacked and asylum-seekers taken to be Muslim, he refused to utter the word Islamophobia. The reality is that years of anti-Muslim racism have brought onto the streets something that has an accurate name: fascism.

A lot of discussion about how the left should currently organise – including debate on whether the Green Party is a useful vehicle for advance – runs the risk of refusing to engage with or learn from the reasons the left was defeated previously, argues KEVIN OVENDEN

As Starmer flies to Albania seeking deportation camps while praising Giorgia Meloni, KEVIN OVENDEN warns that without massive campaigns rejecting this new overt government xenophobia, Britain faces a soaring hard right and emboldened fascist thugs on the streets

