
Rachel Reeves and the 2p Trap
The chancellor’s proposed income tax shuffle is clever accountancy but toxic politics — a pledge-break disguised as fiscal discipline, and proof that Labour has trapped itself in rules it cannot escape.
The rest of the blog
The chancellor’s proposed income tax shuffle is clever accountancy but toxic politics — a pledge-break disguised as fiscal discipline, and proof that Labour has trapped itself in rules it cannot escape.
More than 200,000 young men aren’t “signed off for life”—they are the reserve army of labour, conscripted into the Telegraph’s morality tale to prepare the ground for austerity.
David Frost calls it a new “Red Terror.” The truth is plainer: it’s the Right’s wars, coups and crackdowns that have spilt the deepest blood in politics.
Trump’s latest “kinetic strike” killed three unknown Venezuelans he labelled “narco-terrorists.” The phrase is not law but incantation, a word that strips away humanity and legitimises killing. From Vietnam body counts to Obama’s “signature strikes,” America has always named its enemies into existence, and into death.
To call Robinson’s rally “populist” or “right-wing” is to miss the point. Fascism doesn’t require every marcher to be a coherent ideologue; it requires a mass, a scapegoat, and leaders prepared to turn grievance into violence. That is what we saw in London.
The events of Saturday (13/09) prove that Britain can go fascist. Musk calls for violence, the Telegraph and Times launder his words, and Starmer clings to the flag. We must name the danger or watch it grow.
Camilla Tominey’s sainthood act for Charlie Kirk trades politics for piety. The Right already owns the machinery (press, finance, courts, police) and Kirk was part of the drive shaft. A death certificate doesn’t wash clean a career built on making violence respectable.
The ONS reports zero growth in July. The papers call it “grim news” for Rachel Reeves. In reality, it is the latest entry in a long obituary for British capitalism — a system now sustained only by euphemism, stagnation, and decline.
The recently published Oxfam report revealing that the world’s five richest men doubled their wealth during the pandemic while billions were made poorer spotlights the obscene inequality generated by global capitalism and highlights the urgent need for systemic change centered on collective ownership and democratic control of workplaces and resources by the working class.
The chaos of the “traditional” Boxing Day hunts has ended, with the saboteurs doing all they could to disrupt the hunts; yet we still saw a fox ripped apart by an out-of-control packs of hounds. It’s now time for the Labour Party to commit to ending the blood sport of the ruling class once and for all.
As 2023 draws to a close, it’s time to reflect on the most compelling and insightful reads of the year. In this roundup, I recommend five books spanning climate disaster, digital privacy, the Trump era’s threat to democracy, Marxist theory, and life under Israeli occupation, describing how each illuminates the complex issues defining this moment.
“All I Want for Christmas is You (to Buy Stuff) or Your Exploited Joy,” provides a Marxist and Situationist critique of how the capitalist class has commodified Christmas into a spectacle of consumption that fuels exploitation, alienation, and hollow aspirations.
Behind the convenient façade of connectivity, online life fractures shared meaning and hijacks lived experience into a hyperreal dataspace optimised for extraction, prediction, and control. Fragmented perspectives oscillate desperately between terminals struggling to capture scarce attention now more valuable than ever.
Karl Marx’s controversial 1844 essay “On the Jewish Question” has sparked heated debate over whether it reflects antisemitism or offers insights into capitalism’s exploitative nature. This essay examines Marx’s inflammatory rhetoric and problematic stereotypes while also considering the enduring relevance of his critique of commodification and alienation.
Our pensions should be invested to build the stable, just future we all deserve. But currently, these funds are financing the very oil and gas giants who are profiting from the destruction of our planet.
The Middle East now stands on a knife’s edge as cycles of violence threaten to engulf the region in widening conflict. But even amid the drumbeats of war sounded by the powerful, hope persists in the solidarity of ordinary people demanding justice and charting a course away from the abyss.
The recent heatwave in Texas has cast light on the massive energy waste and environmental damage caused by bitcoin mining, belying its reputation as the currency of the future.
Conspiracy theories exploding during COVID-19 have captured swathes of the British working class. This proliferation indicates the failure of Marxists to foster class consciousness while exposing how reactionary tropes obscure the real economic forces exploiting systemic crises.