Left-wing candidates have won a clear majority in the Unison NEC elections. This is an incredible result, which could set in motion the transformation of Britain’s largest union – and of the entire labour movement in Britain.

Under Keir Starmer’s leadership, Labour is heading for disaster. The party is in a deep crisis. Yet the right wing are attacking the left more than the Tories. But grassroots members are fighting back, saying: Starmer out! Fight for socialism!

The recent outbreak of COVID-19 in the town of Odemira, which led to a lockdown being imposed upon two local parishes, has exposed a festering wound on Portugal’s social fabric. The outbreak has brought to light conditions of modern slavery, involving human trafficking and the exploitation of migrant workers, living under extremely precarious conditions, which contributed to the outbreak of the disease.

Recent events have shone a spotlight on the murky institution of the Monarchy in Britain. This reactionary feudal relic is a key pillar of the British establishment; a reserve weapon of the ruling class. The labour movement must demand its abolition.

The Spanish government’s intention to partially pardon political prisoners of the Catalan independence movement has provoked an angry reaction from the right wing, which is trying to stir up its social base to wear down Socialist Party (PSOE) president Pedro Sánchez. However, key sectors of the ruling class support the amnesty, behind the scenes, confident that their interests are better defended by making this small concession to the Catalan independence movement. What should be the position of the left?

Big business politicians like Joe Biden and Boris Johnson are promising to ‘build back better’, with investment and jobs. But in reality, the working class will be presented with the bill for capitalism’s crises. Storms and struggle lie ahead.

Dominic Cummings has revealed the utter incompetence of the Tory government, which has the blood of thousands on its hands. Only the working class can bring these murderers to justice, but this requires a struggle to transform the Labour Party

The so-called “assault” on the Ceuta border (a Spanish enclave on the African side of the Strait of Gibraltar) by thousands of young migrants in the past few days is part of the same migration crisis that has plagued Africa in recent decades. However, the most recent events have been triggered by a new diplomatic dispute between Spain and Morocco, rooted in the economic crisis unleashed by the pandemic and the worsening of the conflict in the Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara.

On Saturday, while millions of households were distracted by Britain’s “nil points” Eurovision performance, a leaked Public Health England report found its way to the Financial Times.

The racist policy of the Social Democrats is worse than any of the right-wing parties in parliament. It is the result of the party’s inability to deliver on any of its promises of bettering the lives of the majority of Danes. However, as the protests last Wednesday hinted at, the government should expect massive opposition from the streets to their reactionary politics.

A worrying new strain of the coronavirus has emerged from the nightmarish second wave in India, which some scientists fear could spark yet another wave in Britain (where it has gained a foothold), and set back the global fight against the pandemic. This “double mutant” strain, which seems to be more transmissible than previous iterations of the virus, is spreading globally. The hapless Tory administration in Britain is making all the same blunders that provoked the catastrophic surge of infections last winter.

Last week, local residents in Glasgow successfully resisted an attempted Home Office deportation. This inspiring example shows the way forward in the fight against the Tories’ hostile environment – through mass mobilisation and class solidarity.

The following article by our Italian comrades explores the political debates between the leadership of the Comintern and the leaders of its Italian section. The political errors of these leaders, and the subsequent degeneration of the Comintern, contributed to the historic defeats and tragedies that befell the Italian working class in the 1920s onwards. 

Mass demonstrations were seen in cities across Britain over the weekend, as thousands took to the streets to condemn the crimes of Israeli imperialism, and to show support for the Palestinian liberation struggle. Intifada until victory!

One hundred years ago, on 3 May 1921, the partition of Ireland became law in the British parliament. As the Marxist revolutionary, James Connolly, had predicted, partition created “a carnival of reaction both North and South”. It took years of terror, pogroms and bloodshed to establish what the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, James Craig, termed a “Protestant state for a Protestant people”. In the South, the newly established Free State was baptised in the blood of the Republicans who resisted the Treaty and partition.