Last lap of the election…

It looks like curtains for Sunak on 4th July. Despite the fact that there is little enthusiasm for Keith Starmer on the street nothing the Conservatives say can shift Labour’s 20 point lead in the opinion polls. Amongst the Tory grandees the blame game has already begun with Remainers looking to the Liberal-Democrats while the die-hard racists and what’s left of their Brexit faction turn to Nigel Farage’s Reform platform. In Islington over a thousand volunteers are helping Jeremy Corbyn in his fight against the Labour machine to keep his seat in parliament and Nigel Farage managed to break the bourgeois consensus on Ukraine last week. 
To the eternal shame of the fake left Labour MPs who pose as peace campaigners while supporting NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine Farage’s repeated calls for a peace settlement
 take Russia’s legitimate demands into consideration. To the horror of Sunak and Starmer, who closed ranks to denounce Farage as an apologist for Vladimir Putin, Farage’s comments were favourably received on the street even in die-hard Tory and Labour areas. This is not surprising. Though tatty yellow and blue Ukrainian flags still fly over some Government buildings no-one on the street really cares about Zelensky these days. 

Assange: the end of a nightmare

 Seven years holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London followed by five years cooped up in a dungeon in Belmarsh. Julian Assange paid a very high price for defending journalistic freedom. Now he walks free following a plea-bargain deal with the American courts that led to his release this week. We all wish him well as he starts to rebuild his life in Australia.
The WikiLeaks founder will now fight for a pardon that Donald Trump says he will seriously consider if he returns to the White House while Assange supporters vow to continue to campaign to change the law in the United States to prevent further prosecutions against journalists.
We’ve learned many lessons from the Assange campaign whose ultimate victory was undoubtedly due to Assange’s refusal to grovel to imperialist demands and his campaign’s determination to fight for his freedom across the globe. That campaign swayed the Australian Labor government into pressing for his release. It clearly also influenced the Biden administration that is well aware that it needs to woo the liberal constituency in the United States with a show of clemency if it hopes to beat off the challenge from the Trump camp at the presidential elections in November.
The lesson learnt is to have no faith in British “justice” or the courts and constitutions of the other members of the “free world” in Europe. They will all do the bidding of their masters in Washington when the chips are down. The American whistle-blower Edward Snowden made a wiser choice when he fled to Russia in 2013...