Gaza’s collective sumud has proven more powerful than one of the world’s best-equipped militaries, but the change in international attitudes isn’t happening fast enough to save a starving population from Western-backed genocide, argues RAMZY BAROUD

MANCHESTER remained the largest Labour group in the country last week, with 93 of 96 seats. Even on a rather poor night for the party nationally, the Liberals were confined to a single ward. That was West Didsbury, successor to the Didsbury Ward of Manchester’s last elected Tory councillor, Peter Hilton, who finally left the town hall in 1996.
Even more worrying perhaps for those that imagine a Liberal revival in the city of Bright and Cobden, they only came second in a further seven wards. Rather, it was the Manchester Green Party who were runners up in 13 of the city’s 32 wards despite having almost none of the campaign architecture of the other parties.
Further, the closest margin of the night came not from Manchester’s erstwhile opposition, but from Independent Ken Dobson in the staunchly working class Clayton & Openshaw division, where he ran Labour’s Sean McHale within a dozen votes.

SAM WHEELER applauds a visceral, thoughtful interrogation of radicalisation and national identity in contemporary Britain


