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A previous article in Socialism Today, written after the first budget of the incoming Labour government, laid out the dire position facing local council services: “Since 2010-11, councils have made cuts to local services of a huge £24.5 billion. They spent 42% less on services in 2022-23 than if spending had kept pace with cost and demand pressures since 2010-11”.(No.283, December 2024-January 2025)

How has the position changed, after a further budget and another Local Government Funding Settlement? The original figures were based on research by the Local Government Association (LGA) and the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) of council budgets up to 2022-23. However, over the past two years, the LGA projected a further funding gap of £6.2 billion. So, the cumulative, current ‘spending gap’ (the amount required to return to 2010 service standards) has now probably risen to over £30 billion.

As well as seeking to dominate the world oil market, green issues are still playing an unacknowledged role in America’s strategic thinking, despite Trump calling global warming a ‘hoax’ and renewable energy a ‘scam’. Targets of the US administration, Canada and Greenland, are rich in minerals such as lithium that have a major role in green technology. China, US imperialism’s main rival, currently dominates lithium production. Its strategic importance was shown when the US was forced to back down in its tariff war when global supply chains were disrupted due to China’s ban on lithium exports.

Giorgia Meloni’s coalition government in Italy has been in power for over three years now. If she lasts to the end of her full term, in October 2027, she will be one of only two Italian prime ministers to do so since the second world war. But what exactly is the character of Meloni’s government? Is it fascist, or ‘pre-fascist’, as some left groups claim? What explains its stability relative to many other European governments? And in what direction is it heading, asks CHRISTINE THOMAS?

Giorgia Meloni became prime minister of Italy in October 2022, almost exactly 100 years after around 40,000 of Benito Mussolini’s blackshirts marched on Rome. The assembled march was a prelude to King Victor Emmanuel III making Mussolini prime minister, opening up the ‘ventennio’ – 20 years of totalitarian fascist rule. Given that Meloni was previously a member of the MSI – the post-war successor of Mussolini’s fascist party – it was inevitable that analogies would be drawn between the two events.

The annual Socialism weekend in November included a discussion, led by CLIVE HEEMSKERK, on the lessons of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party. With obvious relevance for current debates around Your Party and the fight for a new mass workers’ party, we are publishing what is a combined version of the introduction and reply.

The first thing to understand about Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2019 – ‘Corbynism Mark One’ – is that it was a product of economic and political factors that persist to this day. That those factors resulted in Corbyn’s election as Labour leader in September 2015 was an ‘accident of history’ which could have equally manifested themselves in the formation of a new party. And that is an important context for the debates around Your Party, launched by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana in the summer. Whatever role Your Party may or may not play in the period ahead, the objective factors that are putting the question of a new mass workers’ party on the agenda will remain.

Zohran Mamdani, a self-described ‘democratic socialist’ and now mayor of New York City, faces a choice: responsible ‘governance’ or responsibility to the struggles of the working class, argues JEFF BOOTH of the Independent Socialist Group, the US co-thinkers of the CWI. The full article is available on the ISG website at independentsocialistgroup.org

Mamdani’s win in the race for mayor is a reflection of developing class war in the US, including the inevitable fight over money, land, jobs, and real political power to win even minimal reforms for working people.

In the wake of the kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro by US imperialism, we are reprinting an article by TONY SAUNOIS that was first published in the April 2013 edition of Socialism Today, No.167. This was following the death of Hugo Chávez, Maduro’s predecessor, and draws up a balance sheet of the legacy of Chávez and the ‘Bolivarian revolution’. The article warns that despite Chávez implementing reforms to the benefit of the poor masses in Venezuela, unless the revolution were to go further and break with capitalism the way would be paved for a growth in corruption, inefficiency, and economic sabotage and collapse. These processes were greatly intensified and accelerated under Maduro, who sought even more to accommodate with capitalism, resulting in the economy collapsing by a mind blowing 80% during his presidency, fatally undermining the previous economic and social gains of ‘Chavismo’.

Homesick

By Peter Apps

Published by Oneworld Publications, 2025, £20

Reviewed by Helen Pattison

Homesick is a raw portrayal of the housing crisis in London today. Peter Apps’ book shines a light on this crisis through interviews with ordinary people. Many of the interviewees talk about their, sometimes, low-quality housing in the 1980s but compare it to today when they have little certainty and housing eats up a huge part of their incomes. Private renters in London now spend about 40% of their incomes on rent alone.