Greece’s Broken Democracy and the Fightback from the Streets

the fightback begins

by our Balkan Affairs correspondent

What was meant to be Greece’s “Economic Miracle” has ended up being a catalogue of scandals, tight executive control, no government oversight and shocking examples of corruption and tragic incidents that has led to many deaths. But there had to come a point where the masses fought back and that point has finally come.
European authorities promote Greece as a “post crisis success story”. Yet Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ right-wing government relies on spyware and the flagrant misuse of EU subsidies and is now overseeing a brutal cost-of-living crisis.
On the night of his election victory on 7 July 2019, new prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis declared that Greece was “returning to normal.” Leader of the right-wing New Democracy party, Mitsotakis promised a government of the “best and brightest” and drew a line under the previous four years of Syriza rule, vowing to erase its legacy piece by piece.
More than six years on, Mitsotakis’s tenure has become a cesspool marred by corruption, financial mismanagement, illegal surveillance, cover-ups, abuse of European Union funds, manipulation of the justice system, and a tightly controlled propaganda machine financed through state resources. It’s something that hasn’t  been seen since the fall of the military dictatorship. 
Mitsotakis came to power promising to break with that past, but his premiership has extended it. The first major crack in his stage managed image came in 2022, when the Predator spyware scandal blew open. Investigations showed hundreds of people, ordinary citizens, journalists, opposition figures, and even his own ministers ,under surveillance through a toxic mix of illegal spyware and “legal” phone taps, just after he put the intelligence service under his direct control. The trail led straight to his office. The head of the National Intelligence Service resigned, but no political figures have been prosecuted, and the government hurriedly shut down the parliamentary inquiry in what the opposition called a blatant whitewash.
Barely six months after the Predator revelations, the Tempe train crash on 28th February 2023, shattered what was left of Mitsotakis’s myth of competence. 58 people, mostly students, were killed when a passenger train slammed head-on into a freight train on the Athens–Thessaloniki line, Greece’s worst rail disaster in living memory. From the first hours, the government tried to shrink the story to a single “tragic human error,” throwing an overworked stationmaster to the wolves. Years of warnings about dead signalling systems, understaffing and stalled safety upgrades were brushed under the carpet.
Nearly three years on: no prosecutions, no real consequences. The families of the deceased have become the standard bearers for their dead relatives , staging mass rallies on the anniversary of the disaster and constantly attacking those responsible in the media and in Parliament . One would think that this level of anger and outrage would lead to electoral punishment , but in June 2023 , New Democracy cruised to an easy victory thanks to a divided left wing opposition and so New Democracy became the default government of the country.
Armed with this renewed mandate, Mitsotakis treated the result as a license to rule without restraint. The OPEKEPE scandal, named after the state agency that channels EU farm subsidies , exposed a subsidy system riddled with made up agricultural projects. Billions in EU funds were routed through this machinery while auditors were pushed aside and agency heads who questioned irregularities were removed.
A European investigation describes a systematic, organised fraud operation using OPEKEPE to siphon off Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) funds. Brussels has already hit Greece with a €392.2 million fine and a five per cent cut to future farm subsidies for years of non-existent oversight. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back . After enduring wildfires in the Summer , floods in the Winter , crippling austerity measures, the scandalous actions of the Greek Coastguard who left boats filled with asylum seekers to their fate resulting in many deaths and anger over the Government’s support of Israel’s actions in Gaza: public servants started holding regular strikes, followed by the transport sector and finally the agricultural sector. General strikes have become a regular monthly occurrence and when news of the five per cent cut hit the farmers, they took to the streets, literally . 
This last month they have been blockading the main motorway between Thessaloniki and Athens. Blockading the port of Piraeus. Using their vehicles to bring cities to a standstill . Storming the main airport of Crete and disrupting flights. And when the police try to break up their rallies , they are pelted with anything that comes to hand , even overturning police vehicles as the police flee for their lives . And in the week beginning 15th December, a convoy of tractors numbering hundreds are heading to central Athens and Constitution Square for what will surely be a massive show of public support and a showdown with the infamous riot police.
These actions have not affected opinion polls , this is direct action completely separate from party politics and tribalism. It is the Greek people vs a tyrannical regime that plan to hold onto power until the next scheduled elections in 2027 . Few believe they will last that long , even with the Government’s international friends in the European Union, the USA and Israel. The time has come for a price to be paid and the writing is on the wall . 

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas…

Shops piled high with festive gifts. Streets festooned with Santas, reindeer, angels and tinsel. Children eagerly waiting for their new toys. Yes it’s beginning to look like Christmas...and it certainly is for the rich who rule the Western world celebrating the birth of the founder of Christianity. For the rich this largely consists of rocking around the Christmas tree snorting coke and drinking themselves silly for days on end. For working people it’s a welcome break from the drudgery of life under capitalism – a brief moment when those who produce all the wealth of this country can stop and enjoy the life the billionaires take for granted every day of their own worthless lives. For others, the homeless, unemployed and destitute victims of the capitalist crisis, it’s just another day of despair. The festive clichés of the politicians and the princes of the church are meaningless to them.
It’s not surprising that Jesus seldom gets mentioned, even by those who claim to worship him. The spirit of Christmas has long been reduced to exchanging gifts and cards, gluttony and drinking. Our rulers now leave Jesus of Nazareth to the tame clergy who reserve their most pious platitudes for the supposed birthday of the ‘Prince of Peace’ in December.
Starmer may be an atheist but many of his cohorts say they are Christians. Back in November 2022, the now deputy premier, David Lammy, stood at the pulpit in St Martin-in-the-Fields in London to tell us that Jesus Christ was the inspiration for his politics as well as his lifelong faith. The then Shadow Foreign Secretary was delivering Christian Aid’s annual lecture on the need for a new, multilateral, and moral approach to international development. But then, and even now, he seems to have forgotten that the Nazarene drove the money-changers out of the Temple and said “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God”.
On Christmas the King, the Prime Minister and the Pharisees of the Established Church will lead the chorus in meaningless calls for peace on earth and good will toward to all men. This shouldn’t surprise us. Donald Trump now likes to be thought of as the “President of Peace” – even though he’s done nothing to deserve that acclaim or the Nobel Peace Prize he so fervently desires.
But we are not like them. We stand for genuine peace and real socialism. Peace because only the oppressors and exploiters want war. Socialism because it is essential to eliminate exploitation, unemployment, poverty, economic crisis and war. That’s our Christmas message!

The Trump Trajectory

A frisson of fear swept across the corridors of power in London and the European Union on the publication of Donald Trump’s national security strategy last week.
It admits that “after the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country. Yet the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests.  Our elites badly miscalculated America’s willingness to shoulder forever global burdens to which the American people saw no connection to the national interest. They overestimated America’s ability to fund, simultaneously, a massive welfare regulatory-administrative state alongside a massive military, diplomatic, intelligence, and foreign aid complex”. 
But as the Chatham House imperialist think-tank put it “saving the harshest critiques for Europe’s current trajectory, the 33-page grand strategy pushes commercial ties, strategic stability with Russia, and a strong US hand in Latin America”.
The “Prince of Peace” as Trump styles himself these days tells us that “the days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over”. His strategy upholds the concept of  “America First”  defining the national interest solely as the interest of the ruling class. And while it rejects the old theories of global domination
it declares that the main priority of the United States is to “reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American pre-eminence in the Western hemisphere” – which in Trump-speak means the entire Americas from the Arctic to the Antarctic.
The Trump administration seeks to “Make America Great Again”, largely at the expense of its own allies, and boost American manufacturing through tariffs and protectionism while using secret diplomacy and economic blackmail to achieve its goals. Gone are the days of the “special relationship”, the “new world order” and the “project for the new American century”. British and Franco-German imperialism believed that accepting American leadership would give them a share of the spoils. But they didn’t get much out of the fall of the Soviet Union  or the forever wars that followed in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and the Arab world. Now they’re going to get nothing.
This is what American “isolationism” means. It’s the other side of the reactionary coin – the thinking of those sections of the American ruling class that realise that world domination is beyond their grasp and so seek to restore their hegemony in the Americas  and much of the Global Southwhile maintaining their control of the global oil and energy market.
Whether Trump’s national security strategy becomes the programme for the rest of his term of office remains to be seen. In Washington the isolationists now have the upper hand. The deep state war-mongers are down – but they are definitely not out...

The History of an Idea

  by Ben Soton

The West - The History of an Idea by Georgios Varouxakis, Princeton University Press 2025, 512 pp, Hbk: £35:00

The West is more of an idea than a place  and in this book Georgios Varouxakis traces its history. The concept of ‘The West’ can be traced through a series of historical events; the Greco-Persian Wars of the fifth century BC; the division of the Roman Empire into East and West in the fourth century AD and with the Empire of Charlemagne in the ninth century becoming Western Christendom. The idea crystallised in the 18th  and 19th centuries with the Enlightenment and the development of liberty and democracy. There has to be some reference to geography as it is a point on a map; its core is Western Europe and later came to include North America and Australasia. 
According to Varouxakis the idea of the ‘West’ was developed by the French philosopher Auguste Comte.  Comte developed the idea of Occidentalism in which he saw The West as in the vanguard of humanity that, due to its superiority, had been given a leadership role over the rest of the world. Although Comte was a critic of imperialism his ideas have been used to justify actions of imperialist powers from the 19th century onwards whilst the ‘West’. as distinct from Europe, stood in opposition to Russia – which then and still today was seen as Eastern and despotic.         
Varouxakis traces how the idea of the West evolved from the 19th  and 20th centuries to today’s modern world.  He explains how Russia became excluded from the West and how the whole concept came unstuck during the First World War when Turkey and Russia joined the fray. Germany claimed to be defending the West against ‘Asiatic’ Russia while the Entente Powers pointed to the German alliance with Ottoman Turkey. These problems continued through the inter-war years with talk of the decline of the West while toward the end of Second World War the entry of the United States led to increasing talk of the ‘Atlantic Community’ as distinct from the West.  The chapter on the Cold War covers the twists and turns of European and American foreign policy; both in relation to the socialist camp and towards each other.  
The Second World War has often been viewed as a conflict between pro and anti-Enlightenment ideologies with liberalism, represented by Anglo-American and French imperialism,and socialism led by the Soviet Union having their roots in the 18th century ‘Enlightenment’.  Fascism, on the other hand, is opposed to the Enlightenment and the ideas of the French Revolution. 
This is touched upon in the chapter on the post-Cold-War era which states there is a traditional West based on classical civilisation and Christianity and a modern West based on the Enlightenment. It  has even been said that the Cold War was a conflict between the two pro-Enlightenment ideologies of socialism and liberalism – a conflict between liberty and democracy.  
The chapter on the post Cold War era focuses on Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations and the End of History by Francis Fukuyama. Huntington believed that with the end of the Cold War the West faced new challenges from rival civilisations, which he lists as Islamic, Orthodox, Hindu, Japanese and possibly African and South American. Fukuyama simply claimed that fall of the Soviet Union was the final triumph of the West.            
This book is a history of the idea and not a critique of it. However the twists and turns around what constitutes the West indicate serious flaws with the concept. Some of worst conflicts in history have been between Western powers; not just the first and second world wars but also the Napoleonic wars, the Thirty Years War and the Hundred Years War to name but a few. In living memory the ‘West’ has been used as a euphemism for US-led imperialism and the self-styled Western ‘democracies’ who have been more than willing to support feudal tyrants opposed to secularism or socialism to maintain their hegemony over much of the Global South.

Requiem for a War-Criminal

by Ben Soton

What’s it like to sit down and talk to a mass murderer? To have a chat with Harry Truman, Benjamin Netanyahu or in the case of the film Nuremberg, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring.
The film is based on the book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist by Jack El-Hai and its main focus is the relationship between the US Army Psychiatrist Dr Douglas M Kelly, played by Rami Malek and Hermann Göring, played by Russell Crowe.
When reviewing this film it is worth comparing it to a previous incarnation; the two-part mini-series Nuremberg released in 2000. In the earlier version all twenty-two defendants were mentioned. In this film there was only mention of five; the lead defendant Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Julius Streicher, Admiral Karl Doenitz and the head of the German Labour Front, Robert Ley. 
At the Nuremberg Nazi war-crimes trial the prosecution team was drawn from all four members of the victorious Grand Alliance – the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France. In this film only two of the prosecutors are depicted –Justice Jackson from the USA, played by Michael Shannon and Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, played by Richard E Grant, from Great Britain. Russell Crowe gives an excellent depiction of Herman Göring as a vanquished foe who has lost none of his arrogance emanating from being Hitler’s deputy.
But this is more than just a court-room drama.The film includes a scene where footage of the atrocities committed in the concentration camps is screened as evidence in the trial of the top Nazis to remind the audience, now far-removed from the dark days of the 1940s, of what the Allies were up against in the Second World War.
The psychiatrist Dr Kelly tries to get inside  Göring’s head and is asked to use his understanding to aid the prosecution. He initially argues against this on the grounds of doctor-patient confidentiality. However he then goes on to give information about his interviews to a not unattractive British journalist played by Lydia Peckham while planning to use the information to write a book.
But Kelly’s views on the Nazis were not popular with the US military establishment. He was sidelined and later replaced by Dr Gustave Gilbert, played by Colin Hanks. Although he later became the head of the Department of Psychology at Berkeley his book 22 Cells in Nuremberg did not give him the fame he had hoped for. Though this did not affect his post-war career he  had a drink problem and committed suicide in 1958.
In the final analysis Kelly claimed the Nazis were not unique and that there are people like them in every country, including the United States. On this point he has been proved right more times than I can count.

Same old story...

The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves,  says Labour is cutting NHS waiting lists, the cost of living and government debt while boosting productivity, investment and growth. But this week’s budget contained few surprises with spending plans that had largely already been floated in the media by Starmer aides eager to prepare the public for a mediocre financial review that does next to  nothing to end austerity or reverse the decline in the living standards of working people. 
Sure there were some sweeteners in the Reeves budget like the scrapping of the two-child benefit cap. The state pension will rise by 4.8 percent – £440 a year – and by £575 for people on the newer pension scheme.  And the national living wage and national minimum wage will also be increased.
Starmer & Co call on everyone “to make a contribution” to protect public services and help people struggling with the cost of living. But in reality workers will continue to bear the burden of the capitalist crisis in higher taxes and further cuts to what’s left of the public services.

A step too far...

“Trial by jury is a cornerstone of our democracy and an essential safeguard against authoritarianism “ says Jeremy Corbyn. “It is truly frightening that such a fundamental freedom is now under attack. Once rights are lost, they are not easy to win back. We must resist this with all we’ve got”. 
But, incredible it as it may seems,  the Starmer Government is indeed thinking of scrapping jury trials in England and Wales for all but the most serious of cases. Starmer’s deputy, the Justice Minister David Lammy,  is proposing to massively restrict the ancient right to a jury trial by only guaranteeing it for defendants facing rape, murder, manslaughter or other cases passing a public interest test.
The plans, obtained by BBC News, are allegedly an attempt to end unprecedented delays and backlogs in the courts. But juries are founded on the principle of a fair hearing and a trial of one’s peers. They are considered by many, including legal professionals, to be the cornerstone of our criminal justice system. Judges and barristers have joined in the chorus of opposition to this attack on jury trials forcing Lammy to think again.  He now says that “no final decision” had been made amid rumours of a U-turn in favour of  more modest plans for jury-less super-magistrate courts to hear to cases likely to receive a maximum sentence of three years that was originally floated in the independent review by Sir Brian Leveson. 
Abolishing jury trials would clearly dismantle a core constitutional safeguard that has existed for more than eight centuries. It is the first step towards a police-state. But, at the moment,   it also seems to be a step too far for the bourgeoisie as whole to take if the response of the legal community is anything to go by. 

Dramatic Developments in People’s China

by John Maryon 

China's plan to double Per Capita GDP and reach the personal income level of a moderately developed nation in 10 years is a remarkable ambition. The success of the current 14th  Five Year Plan has raised technical excellence to a level that will lay the basis for China's progress.  Currently the average people’s income is equivalent to approximately £13,500.  However a direct comparison is difficult because prices for most things are much lower in the Asian nation. In meeting its goals China has had to face difficult challenges which have included Covid and trade wars imposed by the United States. It has however managed to exceed a yearly five per cent target.  Under the wise leadership of the Communist Party of China the people can look forward with confidence to the future.
China has the second largest world economy in terms of GDP but in reality when measured in real industrial output it is way ahead.  China has comprehensive trading relations with over 150 countries. It has developed its infrastructure and is able to employ advanced logistics to achieve great efficiency. To avoid threats by imperialists to contain China the  People’s Republic has started seasonal operations on the Arctic sea route and each year thousands of cargo trains transverse between Asia and Europe. Stable development with its partners and friends is enhanced through the Belt & Road Initiative. Education continues to play an important role in China's development with the number of university graduates exceeding 12 million each year. The number of engineers trained each year exceeds that of Germany, Japan and the USA combined. 
China takes a long term approach to investments by supporting projects which will achieve great potential in the future rather than a short term get rich quick project of little lasting value. No wonder they are able to play such a major role in Green and sustainable development.  In the USA today companies are more likely to use their profits to buy back share stock rather than to invest in the future. 
The American response to China's rise has not been to invest, embark upon joint development projects or talk constructively about co-operation. It has  been one of aggressive attempts to cripple and destroy China – or anyone else who in their panic mode they may regard as a threat. The new Comac 919 Chinese commercial aircraft  has been a major target in the West's trade war against competition from Asia. The aeroplane is seen as a direct competitor to Boeing and Airbus. Currently the plane uses Western LEAP 1C engines but with threats to restrict supplies Chinese engineers are now developing their own alternatives. The biggest obstacle however to its success is the refusal to quickly certify the aircraft to fly on important international routes by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency.   Attempts to hold back progress are doomed to failure as China is responding by developing its own engines and control systems and is all ready selling to non-Western markets. Development work on an advanced larger long range aircraft, such as the Comac 929, which will have Chinese engines and avoid Western supply chain threats, is well underway. 
On 23rd October recommendation documents for the 15th Five Year Plan were adopted by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. The proposals focus on high quality development, rather than just economic expansion, as a step towards achieving a leading position in modernisation by 2035. Particular emphasis will be given to sustainability, green growth and technological innovation. 
The documents recognise the demographic challenges that lie ahead and makes provision for health care and social support for an ageing population with increased  investment. The impact of artificial intelligence and further automation upon the job market is taken into account.  In the early stages of building socialism the basic needs include more tons of steel and greater electricity generation. As the economy develops and industry expands, the new phase of socialist progress demands quality development with limited carbon emissions and full respect for the environment.  For society to advance progressive evolving social policies that  reinforce a true socialist ethos are also absolutely essential. 
Efforts by the imperialist states to stifle China's economic, technical and industrial growth are increasing every day. Under American pressure the craven politicians of many leading Western nations, without thought, respect or accountability rush to find favour with their masters in Washington. They replace mutually beneficial trade, diplomacy and co-operation with insulting, ill-conceived and often illegal actions that harm trade, destroy trust and make the world a more dangerous place.  I can imagine future history students being shocked as they learn how Europe's second-rate imperialist states collapsed from self-inflicted stupidity.  The banning of quality and trusted Huawei equipment and its replacement with more expensive Western alternatives is justified by claiming, without convincing evidence, that it is a security risk. The very recent debacle in Holland in which the Dutch government was forced to hand back Xperia to its Chinese owner shows how nasty little schemes can come unstuck. 
People's China has grown from being a poverty-stricken country humiliated by colonial forces to become a powerful modern socialist state. This has been made possible by the leadership of its Communist Party. With the aid of its successful Belt & Road Initiative it is now helping others to throw off their own colonial legacy and advance forward.  The lies of the Western media are shown for what they are with every success that is achieved. 

Love is in the Air

...or so many of us thought back in the 1970s when the forces of liberation were storming through the Global South and massive peace movements could march through the heart of the imperialist world to demand the end of imperialist wars. The words, now largely forgotten outside the ranks of Dundee United fans, were sometimes amended to “peace is in the air” in those halcyon days of the last genuinely Labour government that from time to time would pay lip-service to the cause of peace that commanded significant support amongst the labour movement of the day.
These days Starmer is seldom bothered by such niceties and rarely talks about peace except to justify more arms expenditure or the monstrous expense of our bogus nuclear strike force. Donald Trump is somewhat different. This immensely vain man does little to mask his determination to put the Nobel Peace Prize in his trophy cabinet. Behind his supreme ego lies the equally determined view of prominent circles within the American ruling class that want to “Make America Great Again” – largely at the expense of their own allies – while, at the same time, cut their losses on profitless wars in the Global South 
When the Soviet Union and its European allies went down in 1991 we were told to expect a “peace dividend” in return. The bourgeois gurus on both sides of the Atlantic talked about the “end of history” and predicted that the end of the Cold War would lead to massive cuts in Western defence spending that would usher in a new age of prosperity for everyone in the 21st century. What we actually got was regime-change invasions and a “new world order” of forever wars in the Global South amidst a global capitalist slump with still no signs of recovery on the horizon. And everywhere we look in the capitalist world we see unemployment, homelessness, poverty, drug abuse and crime. The symptoms of industrial decline, inflationary pressures, stock market volatility and economic stagnation. 
Trump’s Ukraine peace plan is a realistic response to the legitimate demands of the Russian Federation and if it ends the conflict in eastern Europe it will bring countless benefits to working people on both sides of the fence.
Sadly the same cannot be said for the Gaza plan, adopted by the UN Security Council last week, that established a ceasefire and laid-out a  vague framework for long-term peace between Israel and Hamas involving international support and a pathway to Palestinian statehood.
Though Trump did, indeed, bring a halt to the Israeli invasion – which is more that can be said for the Biden administration – the fighting still continues, albeit on a much smaller scale in the beleaguered Palestinian enclave. Trump certainly wants to bring the feudal Middle Eastern oil princes and the venal Arab politicians in their pay on board but all the Palestinians get are the usual platitudes which have always come to nothing in the past. 
The proposed “Gaza International Transitional Authority” – headed by The Donald himself –simply aims at replacing the Israelis and the Hamas administration with a government run by American nominees and an occupying army drawn from America’s regional allies while the Palestinians are merely expected to staff the admin sector and the auxiliary police force needed to cover this densely-populated Palestinian strip of land on the Mediterranean coast.
Sure there’s plenty of talk about Arab oil money transforming the post-war Gaza Strip into a millionaires’ playground. But there’s going to be no Arab Monte Carlo as long as millions of Palestinians are forced to live under Zionist bondage. And there’s going to be no peace as longs as the Palestinians are denied their legitimate right to freedom and independence.

The Battle for a Socialist Britain

 by John Maryon

During the summer of 1951 around 8.5 million people visited the Festival of Britain held on the south bank of the Thames in London. It's aim was to celebrate Britain's achievements in culture, architecture , science and industry. It also sought to encourage recovery from the horrors of the Second World War and foster national pride. Remembered for the iconic images of the Skylon and Dome of Discovery the exhibits were colourful and contemporary. People were encouraged to look forward to a brave new world marking a bright new future for Britain. I was there.
Britain still had a strong industrial base and the thriving co-operative movement played an important role in the lives of working class people. We believed that socialism was just round the corner as people were starting to benefit from new social and health care benefits. The NHS had been established three years earlier and new state industries starting to rebuild and modernise our neglected infrastructure. A powerful trade union movement was fighting for better pay, shorter hours, safer working conditions and good pensions. The slums were being replaced by beautiful new council houses. Villages still had their own butchers, bakers, post office and rural people grew all their vegetables. Most people could not afford a motor car but with cheap buses everywhere that did not matter.
We naively believed that with scientific advances and developing technology things could only get better. We envisaged a great future without wars, all sickness would be cured and unemployment become a thing of the past. In many ways the period represented a high point for the socialist ethos in Britain. Since those halcyon days the rich have much more wealthy. Medical advances have failed to conquer many terrible diseases. Imperialism has carried out forever wars. Our economy is failing, our infrastructure is falling to pieces and years of austerity have brought suffering to millions.
Communists recognise the prime cause of Britain's decline is the terminal crisis of capitalism with its irreconcilable contradictions. A crisis made worse by the greed, incompetence and detachment from reality of our so-called leaders. Most Western nations suffer the same malign affliction. The Tories sold all the family silver in a great orgy of capitalist excess when they privatised essential public services. Governments have failed to engage in long term infrastructure investment and many companies have failed to invest in Britain. Essential high tech investment has been neglected in favour of paying workers an appalling basic minimum wage to continue working obsolete systems without innovation.
The debacle has been possible because the working class has not mobilised. The mass media, including the British Brainwashing Corporation (BBC) have been able to anaesthetise people's critical thinking with lies and crude propaganda. We need an effective fightback through class struggle. Labour having abandoned it's socialist values is not in a position to introduce radical policies for change. Many small left wing parties in Britain today are mostly sectarian and prefer to talk among themselves rather than engage in alliances with others. ‘Your Party’ with the respected and trusted Jeremy Corbyn will sadly be unable to tackle the underlying causes of the crisis with a social democratic platform. And then there is the fake left that hover round the Morning Star, who claim to be communist, make a lot of noise, damage working class unity, weaken the struggle against imperialism and achieve very little of substance.
It is essential for a vanguard party committed to Marxism-Leninism to show the way forward and encourage a renewed class struggle. The chief policies of the New Communist Party of Britain are as follows:

* Tax the Rich: More money is needed to properly fund our vital public services, repair the collapsing infrastructure and to invest in green energy, sustainable development and transport for future generations. And it is the wealthy who must pay more. For decades they have amassed huge fortunes by the exploitation of working people. We believe that progressive taxation measures should be introduced to disgorge their vast wealth. Increases in top rates could shift the burden of taxation away from the workers onto the capitalists. Tax evasion by companies should be made illegal and be enforced.

*Public Ownership: Full red:blooded socialist measures are absolutely necessary. Key strategic industries, investment bodies and utilities must be owned and controlled by the people. Within the framework of a planned economy short termism, market anarchy, pollution and cyclical crisis would be avoided. And the surplus value generated spread fairly between the workers and the requirements for new public investment. By public ownership we mean full ownership rather than a loose arrangement in which many functions are out sourced and some assets remain in private hands.

*Independence: Britain needs to free itself from American hegemony and the pretence that it has a special relationship . We must say no way to their obscene demands for increasing war expenditure to five per cent of GDP. We would make peace a major policy and work with diplomacy to build trust and understanding. The war mongers who have governed our country seek forever wars that guarantee huge profits for arms manufacturers. None of the US lackeys ever talk about peace. Of course any nation should have the right to defend itself. We have no obvious natural enemies who would have any interest whatsoever in starting a war against us so expenditure should be measured and adapted to real needs. We oppose warmongering weather from politicians or the BBC who appear to have changed their stated aim of nation speaks peace to nation with the promotion of fear and mistrust.

*Freedom: Socialism with its foundations of equality and fair distribution of wealth in intrinsically more democratic than Capitalism can ever be. But we should always be on our guard against corruption and excesses in the early stages of building socialism. In Britain today many people have been conditioned into being unable to think critically. We would take back the BBC and turn it into a real voice for the people by allowing it to reflect all points of opinion and so enrich our social and cultural development. To achieve real freedom we have to struggle for it through the class struggle and the New Communist Party of Britain will always stand tall in that endeavour.

To learn more about our policies I urge you to become a regular subscriber to the New Worker and join the struggle by joining the NCP today.

Winter is Coming

The knives are out for Starmer. In Downing Street Starmer aides move to undermine Wes Streeting, the Health Minister, said to be plotting to mount a challenge to the beleaguered Labour leader while Streeting himself talks about the "toxic culture" of Downing Street and questions whether the PM's long-time ally and chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, should keep his job.
Labour won a landslide victory in the general election last year. Though this was largely due to the collapse of the Tories deserting in droves to the Faragists Starmer & Co and the gang of old Blairite has-beens that surround him actually thought this was a ringing endorsement of their policies – which amount to little more than continuing with Tory austerity and crawling to whoever is in power in the United States. Now Starmer’s Blairite revival, a trashy imitation of a failed past, has brought Labour to its knees. 
 Everywhere we look we see unemployment, homelessness, poverty, drug abuse and crime. The symptoms of industrial decline, inflationary pressures, stock market volatility and economic stagnation. This is capitalism. And working people are being made to carry the burden of its failure. Unemployment, homelessness, poverty. No wonder the Starmer government is on the rocks.
It would take at least 80 dissident Labour MPs to trigger a leadership challenge but that’s not likely to happen this side of Christmas. Most of the wannabees are from his own bloc like Wes Streeting, Ed Miliband and Shabana Mahmood while the “prince over the water”, Andy Burham, bides his time in Manchester waiting for the opportune time for a bid for power that may never ever come.
We certainly can’t expect much from what’s left of the old Corbynista front in the Parliamentary Labour Party.  Most of them made their peace with Starmer.
 A handful took the principled stand to remain in parliament as part of Jeremy Corbyn’s Independent Alliance.
There’s still fighting talk from Socialist Campaign Group Secretary Richard Burgon who tells us to “cut through the briefings and counter-briefings — what’s playing out is typical Westminster soap-opera stuff, not a disagreement over policy, principle or vision. What’s really needed to prevent a Reform government is a radical change of direction, with real Labour values”.
But that’s not going to happen is it – not as long as the unions remain in the hands of careerists who, despite their bogus socialist credentials and the empty promises of the factions and platforms they head, are still part of Labour’s bureaucratic bloc that put Starmer into office in the first place.
There is, of course, a fight-back driven by the need to stave of the complete collapse of the Labour Party in the Scottish and Welsh parliaments and fend off Reform in the local and regional elections next year. Some will stay to battle it out inside the Labour Party. Others are campaigning inside Corbyn’s new party to hammer out a programme that can provide an effective electoral challenge to the old guard in next years’ polls.
Communists have to defend the principled line of socialist advance throughout the labour movement. We can, and indeed, must work with other progressive forces inside and beyond the Labour Party to support the struggling people of Palestine and the millions upon millions of other people struggling against imperialism across the world and build the resistance to austerity and war throughout our own labour and peace  movement.