Mask-off outbursts by Maga insiders and most strikingly, the destruction and reconstruction of the presidential seat, with a huge new $300m ballroom, means Trump isn’t planning to leave the White House when his term ends, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
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The revolutionary life of Noreen Branson
From aristocratic upbringing to undercover communist courier and finally respected labour historian, MAT COWARD chronicles how personal tragedy and socialist conviction shaped an extraordinary activist’s journey
BEN CHACKO speaks with Knesset member OFER CASSIF about rising political violence, the prospects for peace and his continuous ‘silencing by suspension’
The City is leaning on Rachel Reeves to cut welfare spending — when what’s needed is cuts to all the benefits given to the mega rich, corporations and banks to help them not pay or blatantly dodge their fair share of tax, explains BERNIE EVANS
The choice between two Blairites to revamp the tepid centrism of our ruling party doesn’t even come as cold comfort as we wander the city streets suffering from their third decade of austerity and the fifth of wage stagnation, writes MATT KERR
ANN HENDERSON looks at the trailblazers of the Women’s Trade Union League and their successful fight for female factory inspectors — a battle that echoes in today’s workplace campaigns
HENRY FOWLER puts the strike of public-sector workers in New Zealand in the wider context of deteriorating employment conditions throughout the world’s major economies
MAT COWARD looks back at a protest 105 years ago this month, whose reporting by the media bears uncomfortable similarities with demos today
WHILE his men were out in force, searching in vain for a notorious communist courier, the police chief spent the night dancing with a charming young Englishwoman at a New Year’s Eve ball. His dance partner was, of course, the very agent his officers were hunting. They never caught her; nobody ever did.
Noreen Branson knew how to dance in respectable company — she had, after all, been a debutante. But her aristocratic upbringing at her grandparents’ house in Berkeley Square had not been as untroubled as it might sound: at the age of eight, in 1918, she was suddenly orphaned when both her parents died within days of each other.
Her mother fell to typhoid and then her father was killed in combat. Little Noreen Browne developed a loathing of war which never left her, and which perhaps determined the course of her adult life.
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