After years hidden away, Oldham’s memorial to six local volunteers who died fighting fascism in the Spanish civil war has been restored to public view, marking both a victory for campaigners and a renewed tribute to the town’s proud International Brigade heritage, says ROB HARGREAVES
THERE will be big protests at the Tory Party conference. There deserve to be. Their policies have led to poverty on a massive scale. They have decimated our public services, trampled over our liberties and are now happy to do almost zero to meet our obligations to reach net-zero emissions targets.
But this litany of failure is not simply an indictment of the Tories. It is also an indictment of their policies and everything they stand for.
I fervently hope that they will be gone after the next election; it is the task of the whole labour movement to ensure that they are. Yet it will be a pyrrhic victory if we do not ensure that their policies are ditched too. The country simply cannot afford to carry on in the old way.
The 2025 Budget shores up the PM’s political position with headline-grabbing welfare U-turns, but with no improvements on offer to declining public services or living standards, writes MICHAEL BURKE
The BBC and OBR claim that failing to cut disability benefits could ‘destabilise the economy’ while ignoring the spendthrift approach to tens of billions on military spending that really spirals out of control, argues DIANE ABBOTT MP



