Robinson successfully defended his school from closure, fought for the unification of the teaching unions, mentored future trade union leaders and transformed teaching at the Marx Memorial Library, writes JOHN FOSTER

RISHI SUNAK’S reaction to Diane Abbott’s exquisite victory over Starmer’s hit squad was to claim that Angela Rayner — who openly sided with the persecuted Hackney MP against Starmer — was now in charge of Labour.
She isn’t, of course. But she does have something of an independent mandate in that she was directly elected to her deputy post and was notionally a concession to the idea that Labour remained a broad church.
The price she has paid for remaining little more than a decoration to the new regime is to be incrementally compromised by Starmer’s serial betrayals, staying silent while he and Rachel Reeves firmed up their neoliberal economic policies.

Holding office in local government is a poisoned chalice for a party that bases its electoral appeal around issues where it has no power whatsoever, argues NICK WRIGHT

From Gaza complicity to welfare cuts chaos, Starmer’s baggage accumulates, and voters will indeed find ‘somewhere else’ to go — to the Greens, nationalists, Lib Dems, Reform UK or a new, working-class left party, writes NICK WRIGHT

There is no doubt that Trump’s regime is a right-wing one, but the clash between the state apparatus and the national and local government is a good example of what any future left-wing formation will face here in Britain, writes NICK WRIGHT

European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde sees Trump’s many disruptions as an opportunity to challenge the dollar’s ‘exorbitant privilege’ — but greater Euro assertiveness will also mean greater warmongering and militarism, warns NICK WRIGHT