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
IT is the anniversary of the Labour election win on October 15 1964, and also the anniversary of the victory on October 10 1974. In both cases, Harold Wilson became Labour prime minister.
The election victories and the context in which they took place are fast moving from living memory into labour history.
In both cases, the Labour majority was slim — an overall majority in single figures in both 1964 and in October 1974. Indeed, so small was the margin in 1974 that Labour spent some of the time up to the 1979 election in a pact with the Liberal Party (now the Lib Dems), which itself may seem rather odd to those more familiar with the events from 2010-15.
The PM is drawing cautious distance from Donald Trump over Iran – but history suggests Britain’s support may run deeper than it appears, just as it did during the Vietnam war, says KEITH FLETT
It’s not just the Starmer regime: the workers of Britain have always faced legal affronts on their right to assemble and dissent, and the Labour Party especially has meddled with our freedoms from its earliest days, writes KEITH FLETT
Who you ask and how you ask matter, as does why you are asking — the history of opinion polls shows they are as much about creating opinions as they are about recording them, writes socialist historian KEITH FLETT
The summer saw the co-founders of modern communism travelling from Ramsgate to Neuenahr to Scotland in search of good weather, good health and good newspapers in the reading rooms, writes KEITH FLETT


