SOLOMON HUGHES recommends Sunjeev Sahota’s recent novel set in a trade union election campaign for its fresh approach to what unites and divides workers, but wishes the union backdrop was truer to life
NOT content with perpetually reinventing himself, pundit Paul Mason now wants to reinvent the left.
The actually existing left is, in Mason’s words “…directionless, leaderless, riven into competing projects, with no guiding philosophy and — therefore completely incapable of achieving its favoured objective: Gramscian ‘hegemony’ within Britain’s progressive social majority.”
Note the careful phrasing which establishes the limits of left-wing ambition as within a “progressive social majority.”
Deep disillusionment with the Westminster cross-party consensus means rupture with the status quo is on the cards – bringing not only opportunities but also dangers, says 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
Reform’s rise speaks to a deep crisis in Establishment parties – but relies on appealing to social and economic grievances the left should make its own, argues NICK WRIGHT



