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Helen Mercer
THE PRIVATEER: Wes Streeting
Features / 11 March 2026
11 March 2026

In the second part of her critique of Wes Streeting’s TenYear Plan for Health, HELEN MERCER looks at the central planks of this privatisation blueprint

Health workers form a blockade in Soho Square during a protest outside the London headquarters of US tech giant Palantir, which was awarded a �330 million contract by NHS England last month to create a new data management system called the Federated Data Platform, December 21, 2023
Big Tech / 10 March 2026
10 March 2026

While Wes Streeting claims Britain lacks a growth strategy, his own NHS plans reveal one – turning the health service’s vast troves of patient data into a commercial asset for tech giants, investors and private healthcare firms, says HELEN MERCER

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Books / 6 February 2026
6 February 2026

HELEN MERCER recommends a timely history of the Civil Service worker organisation that proposes a principled and strategic approach for the future

In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Services o
Features / 14 March 2025
14 March 2025
For Britain, direct military aid is just the tip of the iceberg compared to the spiralling energy crisis that has fueled inflation, driven millions into fuel poverty and inflated corporate profits, reveals HELEN MERCER
FAUSTIAN PACT: AFL-CIO President George Meany, left, and US
Book Review / 20 December 2024
20 December 2024
HELEN MERCER welcomes an account of how US labour leadership collaborated with the state and betrayed their membership
LONG-AWAITED DAY: Royal Marine commandos moving off the Norm
Features / 7 June 2024
7 June 2024
A look at the writing of war correspondent James Aldridge 40 years ago reminds us of the eastern perspective when a second front was finally opened on D-Day, 1944, says HELEN MERCER
WHAT'S CHANGED? (L to R) Alexis Hunter, The Marxist Wife Sti
Exhibition Review / 24 January 2024
24 January 2024
HELEN MERCER casts an experienced eye over an ambitious exhibition that nevertheless contains painful gaps
BLIGHT AND NEGLECT: An illustration from Coast of Teeth
Book Review / 17 October 2023
17 October 2023
HELEN MERCER is disappointed by a depiction of Englands ‘coastal commons’ that lacks compassion and fails to illuminate the root causes of their decay
A sculpture called Anything To Say, which features life-size
Features / 14 July 2023
14 July 2023
HELEN MERCER explains the parallels between the two cases, and why the Committee to Defend Julian Assange will be at the festival this year
(L to R) Louise Thompson Patterson at the 7th Federal Congre
Books / 19 February 2023
19 February 2023
HELEN MERCER applauds a book that restores the contribution of US communists to the Civil Rights movement
BRIGHTON BEACH: Occasional 'culturally required' purchases,
Book Review / 5 June 2022
5 June 2022