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
Golliwogs and biscuit bribes: a Chequered past
Worried that Labour leaders may be too close to the hoi polloi, at the start of the last century the Tories put in place a weekend life of luxury as a country gent for all PMs — SOLOMON HUGHES reveals a shady instance of institutionalised bribery
Prime Minister Boris Johnson meets Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta at Chequers
Morning Star international editor ROGER McKENZIE says Trump’s ceaseless belligerence is a desperate effort to prevent the emergence of a multilateral world
Don’t dismiss Lebanon as a side theatre of this war, warns SEVIM DAGDELEN — there are signs Israel has expansion in mind, and it has demonstrated its willingness to expel and kill whole populations
The media present Starmer as staying out of Trump’s war — but we’re already deeply involved in a conflict that sees the US and Israel kill civilians on a huge scale, argues IAN SINCLAIR
LINDA PENTZ GUNTER reports on this week’s conference unveiling the findings of the Gaza Tribunal established by Jeremy Corbyn
CHRISTOPHE IMMER of the Morning Star’s German sister paper Junge Welt reports on a Berlin conference on the politics of art and the legacy of Marxist critic Hans Hess
CHEQUERS, the prime minister’s country house retreat, is a classic bit of English Establishment social engineering: Arthur Lee, a Tory MP who got a lot of money when he married a super-rich American banker’s daughter bought and restored the dilapidated Buckinghamshire manor house in 1912.
Lee thought that all prime ministers should relax in a country house at the weekend, but knew that the arrival of universal suffrage meant you could not always expect prime ministers to have one of their own. So Lee bequeathed Chequers to a Trust, which provides it to prime ministers to play the country gent in.
By giving prime ministers the luxury of the rich and accoutrements of the Establishment, Chequers helps ensure prime ministers will be less likely to take away any of the luxuries of the rich or challenge the establishment.
Similar stories
Building is the solution for much of our housing crisis – and will also help to address poverty, ill health, and even anti-social behaviour and alienation, writes KENNY MacASKILL
The Prime Minister’s hamfisted promotional video promising to go ‘further and faster’ coincides with Angela Rayner’s resignation over tax dodging and Mandelson’s long overdue departure over Epstein — incredible timing, writes MATT KERR
SOLOMON HUGHES asks whether Labour ‘engaging with decision-makers’ with scandalous records of fleecing the public is really in our interests
Health Secretary Wes Streeting taking £53k from Tory-linked recruiter and outsourcer Peter Hearn’s OPD Group is a great example of how Labour’s rich donors shape policies targeting the poor – not their wealth, writes SOLOMON HUGHES