MAY 4 WAS an electoral disaster for New Labour, which lost the London mayoralty to Ken Livingstone, lost 600 seats in local council elections, and came a poor third to the Liberal Democrats in the Romsey parliamentary by-election. These results mark the end of the New Labour government's honeymoon, a puncturing of the extraordinary bubble of Blair's post-Thatcher/Major popularity.
The May 1 protest is symptomatic of significant shifts in the mood of a section of young people internationally, as expressed by last year's Carnival Against Capitalism in the City of London and the mobilisations against the World Trade Organisation in Seattle and the IMF/World Bank in Washington DC.
Trotsky's life and ideas
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In Issue No. 48
Youth Politics
A growing anti-capitalist consciousness
Scotland: New Labour's Scottish problem
German scandal:
All establishment parties loose out
Mayor Ken
What role will Ken play now
Ireland
'Celtic Tiger' fuels upsurge in workers' militancy
Sri Lanka
Tamil Tigers inflict severe blow on army
Environment
The government's new waste strategy
Don't hesitate
Inside the new Tate Modern