RAMZY BAROUD on how Israel’s narrative collides with military failure
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Golliwogs and biscuit bribes: a Chequered past
Worried that Labour leaders may be too close to the hoi polloi, at the start of the last century the Tories put in place a weekend life of luxury as a country gent for all PMs — SOLOMON HUGHES reveals a shady instance of institutionalised bribery
Prime Minister Boris Johnson meets Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta at Chequers
ROGER McKENZIE explains how Ibrahim Traore has sparked the flames of hope across Africa, while the Western powers seek to extinguish all attempts to build true sovereignty in the long-exploited continent
DANIEL GOVER considers the procedural complexities awaiting a Private Member’s Bill in its passage through Commons and Lords
JAMIE TUCKNUTT reports on an initiative that brings together two epochs of the city’s anti-fascist struggles
Just as German Social Democrats joined the Nazis in singing Deutschland Uber Alles, ANDREW MURRAY observes how Starmer tries to out-Farage Farage with anti-migrant policies — but evidence shows Reform voters come from Tories, not Labour, making this ploy morally bankrupt and politically pointless
KEITH FLETT traces how the ‘world’s most successful political party’ has imploded since Thatcher’s fall, from nine leaders in 30 years to losing all 16 English councils, with Reform UK symbolically capturing Peel’s birthplace, Tamworth — but the beast is not dead yet
With turnout plummeting and faith in Parliament collapsing, BERT SCHOUWENBURG explains how radical local government reform — including devolved taxation and removal of party politics from town halls — could restore power to communities currently ignored by profit-obsessed MPs
CHEQUERS, the prime minister’s country house retreat, is a classic bit of English Establishment social engineering: Arthur Lee, a Tory MP who got a lot of money when he married a super-rich American banker’s daughter bought and restored the dilapidated Buckinghamshire manor house in 1912.
Lee thought that all prime ministers should relax in a country house at the weekend, but knew that the arrival of universal suffrage meant you could not always expect prime ministers to have one of their own. So Lee bequeathed Chequers to a Trust, which provides it to prime ministers to play the country gent in.
By giving prime ministers the luxury of the rich and accoutrements of the Establishment, Chequers helps ensure prime ministers will be less likely to take away any of the luxuries of the rich or challenge the establishment.
More from this author
Labour’s pop-loving front bench have snaffled up even more music tickets worth thousands apiece, reports SOLOMON HUGHES
Secret consultation documents finally released after the Morning Star’s two-year freedom of information battle show the Home Office misrepresented public opinion, claiming support for policies that most respondents actually strongly criticised as dangerous and unfair, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
SOLOMON HUGHES highlights a 1995 Sunday Times story about the disappearance of ‘defecting Iraqi nuclear scientist.’ Even though the story was debunked, it was widely repeated across the mainstream press, creating the false – and deadly – narrative of Iraqi WMD that eventually led to war
Despite Labour’s promises to bring things ‘in-house,’ the Justice Secretary has awarded notorious outsourcing outfit Mitie a £329 million contract to run a new prison — despite its track record of abuse and neglect in its migrant facilities, reports SOLOMON HUGHES
