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
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Macron’s gamble blows up French politics
The snap election call has spectacularly backfired, with the right and centre furiously backstabbing itself into oblivion, and the left, from the communists to social democrats, quickly uniting into a New Popular Front, writes NICK WRIGHT
Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Rally and President Emmanuel Macron
ANDY McDONALD MP says Labour must show it is capable of delivering real improvements in people’s lives — bold action is required
ANGUS REID and ANDREW JOHNSTONE report on an initiative that we must take this summer
ALLISON FEWTRELL on what Plaid Cymru's historic election victory means for the communities being failed by Wales’s housing crisis, and four things the new government can do right now
France Insoumise MP JEROME LEGAVRE speaks to Christophe Domec on building the Europe-wide peace movement that came together in the International Conference Against War last weekend
At last weekend’s International Conference Against War, LINDA PENTZ GUNTER talks to the Palestinian physician and politician about the struggles ahead to achieve a truly free Palestine
THIEVES’ argot for a safecracker is “a Peterman.” The word’s origins are contested: one version has it that the term derives from Scotland’s Peterhead prison from which the notorious safecracker Johnny Ramensky, alias Johnny Ramsey, escaped five times.
Another has its origins in the term saltpetre (potassium nitrate), the key ingredient in gunpowder. A more likely origin is in the French verb “peter” — to blow up, or more crudely, to fart.
President Emmanuel Macron is today a Peterman par excellence. His reckless decision to call a general election in the impossibly short time of two weeks leaves just a few days before the French people get to pass judgment on their political class.
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