There have been penalties for those who looked the other way when Epstein was convicted of child sex offences and decided to maintain relationships with the financier — but not for the British ambassador to Washington, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
It's not fascism, but it must be fought
TONY CONWAY, convenor of the Communist Party’s Anti Racist and Anti Fascist Commission, assesses the situation for anti-fascists in light of Johnson's shock majority
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has a history of race-baiting comments
Labour’s new Treasury unit will ‘challenge unnecessary regulation’ by forcing nominally independent bodies like Ofwat to bend to business demands — exactly what Iain Anderson’s corporate clients wanted, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
DR DYLAN MURPHY looks at a Big Brother Watch report which exposes the government as an enabler of DWP secret spying on benefit claimants
The EU faces a critical choice: will it remain in the shadow of an increasingly unreliable US ally, or will it forge its own path in a multilateral world where co-operation with China is essential, asks MARC VANDEPITTE as leaders meet for the EU-China Summit
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
For Egypt trade trumps the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, but how long can the country’s ‘misleaders’ – and others in the region – continue their indifference against the popular will of their own people, asks ROGER McKENZIE
THERE has been a lot written as to why the Labour lost the general election, some of which appears to suggest the Conservative Party is either fascist or leading the country in this direction – and voters, particularly those in the north and the Midlands, voted Tory for racist reasons.
The Conservative Party is not a fascist party. No doubt fascists exist within it. Tommy Robinson has said he has joined for instance, as has Katie Hopkins. Today it has right-wing elements – but it always has, for example the right-wing Monday Club. But this doesn’t make it fascist.
It can perhaps now be defined as a right-wing English nationalist party. There are similarities which have been used by some to define the Tories as proto-fascist — populism and scapegoating for example, but privileged elites such as banks, the City and so on have not been attacked and the populist sloganeering amounted to “Get Brexit Done” — which was a response to the failure by Parliament to do what it said it would do in 2017.
More from this author
TONY CONWAY assesses the lessons of the 1930s and looks at what is similar, and what is different, about the rise of the far right today
As anti-immigration rhetoric gains mainstream acceptance, trade unions must unite workers across backgrounds while challenging the false narrative that blames migrants for economic hardship, argues TONY CONWAY
Today’s far-right demo called by ‘Tommy Robinson’ from prison to ‘free the political prisoners’ is a dark sign of today’s politics. We need a class-based fightback now, argues TONY CONWAY
Western social democracy's timidity has emboldened the fascists. TONY CONWAY looks at the far right's resurgence in Britain
