Is fascism ‘growling at the door’?
With Reform ahead in the opinion polls and more than 100,000 marching on a demonstration called by Tommy Robinson, HANNAH SELL assesses the growth of the far-right in Britain, and the tasks facing the workers’ movement.
Labour is neck and neck with the Tories in current polls, both on an unprecedented low of 16%. More than two thirds of voters have broken with Britain’s traditional major parties.
Discontent is growing on Labour’s backbenches along with rumbles about Starmer resigning in the hope that a new face could fix their predicament. But it is the government’s continuation of austerity, and its failure to improve public services or living standards that are the root of its problems, not Starmer’s lack of charm. This is the inevitable result of Labour’s role as loyal lieutenants of diseased British capitalism. The warning lights are flashing on the dashboard of the world economy, but even before a new crisis, growth in Britain is flatlining and the cost of government borrowing has hit the highest level since 1998. The capitalists are demanding that Labour responds by further attacks on the working class. In this situation, November’s budget can only increase popular anger at this already hated government.
Read moreMissing the mark on antisemitism
What is antisemitism? What are its roots? How has it been politically weaponised? And how can it be opposed? JUDY BEISHON critically reviews a recent book on the issue.
Off-White: The Truth About Antisemitism
By Rachel Shabi
Published by Oneworld Publications, 2025, £10-99
It has been during the war on Gaza, with its massive and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinians by the Israeli state, that Rachel Shabi has published her book about antisemitism. What she describes as “a wider global spate of antisemitism” – its reemergence from “dormancy” – came after the start of that war.
Read moreNo escaping capitalism’s logic
As Your Party supporters discuss what policies a new party needs, CALLUM JOYCE reviews a book by two Starmer apologists and argues that it’s not sufficient to criticise the consequences of austerity, you need a socialist programme to fight it.
The Only Way Is Up: How to take Britain from Austerity to Prosperity
By Polly Toynbee and David Walker
Published by Atlantic Books, 2024, £14-99
“The sorry tale starts with austerity, a deliberate Tory decision in the wake of the financial crash not to ask the better-off to pay more in taxes but instead to cut back welfare and public services”. This is how the authors of The Only Way Is Up begin their account of 14 years of economic and social decline under the previous Tory governments, outlining in graphic detail how Britain’s public services have been systematically stripped of funding and resources and the brutal consequences for workers and young people.
Read moreEngland’s first revolution
LINDA TAAFFE reviews a book that lifts the lid on a revolutionary period of British history that the ruling class would like to keep hidden.
Republic: Britain’s Revolutionary Decade, 1649-1660
By Alice Hunt
Published by Faber & Faber, 2025, £12.99
The year of the French Revolution, 1789, is celebrated every year, and not only in France! Even here we socialists honour our heroic forebears who stormed the Bastille.
Unfortunately, England has no equivalent celebrations. Yet more than a hundred years previously, in the 1640s, English peasants had done the same thing. They overthrew the rich and powerful and executed the king Charles I. This was the first bourgeois revolution that allowed feudalism to be swept away and capitalism to develop. Ever since the British ruling class have assiduously used the winning back of the crown by Charles II in 1660 to wipe out all memory of the English Revolution.
Read moreEditorial: The fight for a new mass workers’ party is on
Whatever the exact course events might take in the weeks and months ahead, the possibility of the development of a new, mass vehicle of independent working-class political representation is now part of the consciousness of all classes in Britain, as the multi-faceted crises of capitalism unfold.
This is the indelible result of the appeal made by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana on July 24 to join in the founding of “a new kind of political party”, based on “a mass redistribution of wealth and power” against the “rigged system”.
Read moreUnite’s historic conference
In November 2020 Socialism Today published an article, The Battle for Unite, (Issue No.243) in anticipation of the union’s 2021 general secretary election campaign. We quoted the BBC’s Iain Watson who said, “the result of that contest will determine whether the union works closely with Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership, or is willing to be openly critical”.
The biennial Unite policy conference held this July kicked off a year of leadership elections in Unite. This October will see nominations open for the lay member executive council (EC), with voting starting in January; and later in 2026, members will vote for the general secretary position.
Read moreUnions discuss political strategy
THEO SHARIEFF gives a round-up of discussions on political representation at this year’s union conferences and the approach of delegates to their union’s relationship with Starmer’s Labour.
The joint announcement in July by Independent Alliance MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana of their intention to establish a new political party in Britain to “take on the rich and powerful” amassed support from over 700,000 in the space of days.
Their announcement came just three days after over 1,000 trade union members met to discuss how the fight for a political voice for the trade union movement could be advanced in light of Labour’s continued attacks on the working class. Initiated by Socialist Party member and former MP Dave Nellist, the meeting was attended and addressed by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, the first such meeting since Zarah Sultana had made a public statement resigning from the Labour Party.
Read moreFederalism and a new workers’ party
CHRISTINE THOMAS argues that the experience of the development of the early Labour Party, in particular its federal structure of representative democracy, is a useful contribution to current discussions on the formation of a new party in Britain.
The announcement by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana on 24 July that they would be launching a new party, following the decision by delegates at Unite conference to review the union’s relationship with Labour, has placed the question of working-class political representation firmly on the agenda in Britain. In just three days, 500,000 people had added their names to an email list for a new party, while one opinion poll placed a new Corbyn-led party neck and neck with Labour. These developments, at a time when the new party is still only in the concept stage, are a clear indication of the potential that exists for channelling the anger that has exploded against Labour’s pro-austerity, pro-war, pro-big business policies after only one year in office.
Debates are already under way about what kind of new party is needed and how it should be organised. For 30 years the Socialist Party (and its forerunners) has virtually alone argued and campaigned for a new mass workers’ party – with the exception of the brief ‘accident’ of Corbyn becoming leader of the Labour Party from 2015-2019. At that time, had Corbyn taken decisive action to oust the Blairites plotting against him in parliament, local government and the party apparatus, Labour itself potentially could have been transformed into a workers’ party.
Read moreWhat can we learn from France Insoumise?
France Insoumise is the main left organisation in France, with 70 MPs and nearly half a million members. LEILA MESSAOUDI of Gauche Révolutionnaire (CWI France) explains its programme, class orientation and method of organisation.
Since Emmanuel Macron came to power as French president in 2017, France Insoumise (FI – France Unbowed) is the only political force resisting the offensive by the capitalist parties and their representatives on a wide scale. It is opposed to racism, to police violence, and to war. This is in a context where the rest of the ‘left’ and the leadership of the trade union movement is holding back, forming a kind of ‘national unity’ in the face of political and economic crises. FI also denounces the ills of this capitalist system, especially the economic and environmental problems.
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