Sarah Helm, a prominent author and journalist, is the wife of the British prime minister's national security adviser, Jonathan Powell

The main winners of the government’s latest proposal will be developers and existing home owners who will find it easier to sell at inflated prices, argues Martin Wicks. “The IMF, Office of Budget Responsibility and the Treasury Select Committee have all warned that the government's Help to Buy scheme will push up house prices but have limited impact on increasing badly needed affordable house building.” - Jack Dromey, Shadow Housing Minister, July 5th 2013. The government is introducing a new version of Help to Buy, called Your First Home. Whilst the details won't be announced until the budget, we know that the deposit will be 2.5%, compared to 5% under Help to Buy, and the government's equity loan will be 20%.

The councillors have said Shabana Mahmood's immigration changes "risk causing great harm and fractures in our society and communities"

Support workers at the V&A, sign the petition!

When you have one side lying and the other side trying to tell the truth, the BBC's misguided approach to balance inevitably favours the liar, argues former BBC reporter and producer Patrick Howse

Leftist formerde President Gustavo Petro called the nationwide protests "a wake-up call" for Colombia's "tyrannical" government.

Review by Simon Pirani of Russia’s New Imperialism: Capital and Ideology, by Ilya Budraitskis and Ilya Matveev (Stanford University Press, 2026). Reposted with thanks from Links journal – In …

The new Socialist Campaign Group pamphlet, The Socialist Policies We Need, is certainly generating interest. Labour Hub was even contacted by a reporter from a right wing national newspaper asking how she might obtain a copy. In the past, the launch of left policy ideas often fell into the void. Now, things feel different. If the new Prime Minister is serious about ending 40 years of neoliberalism, he needs to dip into the ideas proposed in this pamphlet. There are contributions here from over a dozen socialist parliamentarians. Kim Johnson MP…

Over 5,000 arrests in three weeks reveal a republic quicker to discipline teenagers than to teach them.

Mark Perryman introduces the latest festival of ideas from Lewes Labour Party. In the early 1980s, on both sides of the Atlantic, Thatcherism and Reaganomics spearheaded a revolution in economics that was both to go global and remain largely intact for the following four decades. This is what we know today as 'neoliberalism'. Today, there is an increasing emergence of a politics that seeks to challenge this legacy - most notably from Andy Burnham when he became Labour Leader and described what happened under Thatcherism as a “wrong turn” which 40 years later was yet to be reversed.

Watching Big Chicken: A Fast Food Conspiracy, I was shocked to see the damage the chicken industry is doing to rivers, communities and animals. And now I’ve learned the Government wants to expand Big ...

The latest evidence from the Afghanistan inquiry shows how a murder investigation can be weakened when the military controls so much of the material, personnel and decision-making on which it depends.

Ten soldiers describe killing unarmed Palestinians and recording the dead as ‘terrorists’ during Israel’s Gaza genocide

Workers at the college we are fundraising for in Kryvyi Rih, part of KVPU union federation’s education union After an extremely busy summer winning strengthened UK labour movement solidarity …

By Kiran Pillai Artificial intelligence is often discussed as a technology that will make workers faster. A more radical question is what happens when workers no longer need to spend as much time working. If AI can perform a growing share of administrative, analytical, technical and creative tasks, society could use the resulting productivity gains to increase profits. But it could also use them to increase human freedom. The four-day working week offers a practical starting point. Instead of allowing every productivity improvement to become another demand for higher output, companies and governments could convert a portion of AI-generated productivity into reduced working time without reducing incomes.

Concerns about elderly Northern Ireland veterans are being used to protect the SAS from the Afghanistan inquiry

As its 90th anniversary passes, Richard Price reflects on how this historic protest is still being used to advance narrow agendas. The destiny of many great historical events is to have their rough edges smoothed in order to create a comfortable national story. The Second World War, unlike the first, is safely enshrined as ‘the good war’, when the nation came together under the inspiring leadership of Churchill and defeated fascism. Hindsight and in particular the horrors of the Holocaust have posthumously relegated contemporary opposition to the fringes. Those who opposed the war at the time from various points of the compass – among them the far right of the Tory party, Welsh and Scottish nationalists, pacifists, fascists, Communists (before the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941) and Trotskyists – have little to say on the subject these days.

The Ukraine Solidarity Campaign is calling a protest at the American Embassy in London for Friday evening. Christopher Ford explains why. Since Donald Trump became President, the United States has increasingly acted not as an ally of Ukraine but as an assistant to Russia in its war of aggression. The so‑called Diesel Deal is only the latest and most blatant act of betrayal. Russia has been struggling on land and at sea against Ukraine’s resistance. Unable to secure victory, the Kremlin’s strategy has become one of terror— seeking to make Ukraine unliveable through relentless bombardment of major cities.

DOWNLOAD THE BULLETIN AS A PDF HERE In this week’s bulletin: Will Russia invade more of Europe?/ Russian school teacher’s view/ Lviv worker resistance/ Trump ultimatum to Ukraine/ Evidence of Russi…

Tax isn't just about raising money; it's about changing behaviour - and we need something drastic to fix the housing crisis

Mike Phipps reviews Reindustrialise Britain: A Strategy for Wealth Creation, by Costas Lapavitsas, Larry Elliott and Doug Nicholls, published by Polity. Nobody who has looked at Britain’s economic woes in recent years can be unfamiliar with the authors’ diagnosis: “Deregulated markets have led to stagnating living standards, prioritised finance over production and increased reliance on imports.” There is a widespread belief that Britain is ‘broken’ alongside record levels of contempt for the entire political establishment. The state we’re in Market-led de-industrialisation and financialisation have been catastrophic for Britain – and other wealthy economies too.

By Frank Hansen Following the Labour Party Conference, there is certainly a new mood of optimism that the Party may be returning to its social democratic roots. While socialist ideas may be in the ascendancy, let's not get too carried away just yet. Major policy change is still to be realised and implemented. We can all applaud Andy Burnham’s idea of reversing neoliberalism by taking back control of privatised essential services, but how will this be done? What about the future? A new wave of neo-liberal, generative AI (GenAI), based on Large Language Models (LLMs) and hyperscale data centres is sweeping the globe, driven by US Big Tech oligarchs.

DOWNLOAD THE BULLETIN AS A PDF HERE A Digest of News from Ukrainian sources – also attached as a PDF In this week’s bulletin: Ivanka ‘Hayka’ Kutsenko killed/ Miners’ union and union federation appe…

This is the final part in a series of articles by Carl Rowlands, which relates Stuart Holland’s development of an Alternative Economic Strategy in the 1970s to themes addressing technology questions in the 2020s. It seems that Stuart Holland’s work from the mid-1970s, somewhat caricatured in the interim, is becoming especially relevant again. The UK, and Europe more widely, face huge political, economic, social and environmental challenges, many of them resulting from the imbalances and turbulence resulting from the hyper-financialisation of the 1980s and 1990s. It is extremely difficult to plot a course from where we are, to an economic system which uses planning to drive sectoral-based growth and puts workers’ control as a priority.

A few days after the big Burnham speech in Liverpool, Bryn Griffiths, the host of our Labour Left Podcast, spent his Saturday reflecting upon what it all meant. His first stop was the Momentum National Coordinating Group and then it was on to Lewes Labour Party for a round table discussion on the Burnham Bounce. Labour Again My own response as Andy (he feels like an Andy rather than the harsher ‘Starmer’) sat down after his Labour Conference 2026 speech was a heartfelt “I think we’ve got a Labour leader again!” I had been driving my car but I had actually cheered once or twice as Andy spoke - an event during a Labour Prime Minister’s speech - which is without any historical precedent.

An update primarily compiled from reports from Justice for Colombia. Just two months after right wing President De la Espriella took office, Colombia’s fragile decade-old peace process hangs in the balance. The agreement, signed between the government and the leftist FARC-EP (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army), promised to bring an end to over 50 years of war in the country. Yet since then, nearly 500 former FARC-EP combatants who signed the agreement and more than 1,700 activists have been murdered. Of the 13,500 accredited FARC members in the peace process, over four per cent may have died violently, despite having disarmed and begun reintegrating into civilian life.

But will the government change its policy? asks Martin Wicks. At this year's Labour Party Conference, the Labour Campaign for Council Housing's resolution, sent in by at least ten CLPs, was kept off the agenda by a decision of the Conference Arrangements Committee. In fact, 1,126 CLP resolutions were deemed not 'contemporary'. Only 90 CLP resolutions made it on the agenda. It was judged not to be a 'contemporary motion' because, we were told, the National Policy Forum report had 'substantially' covered the issues in it. That was nonsense. There was only a single paragraph on housing.

The move comes just over a year after Syngenta, owned by state Chinese firm Sinochem, was given more than £2 million in Scottish Enterprise funding to expand its Scottish site

Over 120 campaigning organisations and unions across Europe, including CEO, Global Justice Now and EPSU have issued a joint call to governments and the European Commission to scrap all existing public...

Rosie Brocklehurst reviews Indefensible: How lawyers failed to stop the Post Office scandal, by John Hyde, published by Bristol University Press. The Horizon Post Office scandal is one of the biggest cases of injustice in recent British legal history. Many journalists reported on the story, but there are four journalists who should be singled out for the sheer persistence, scale of coverage and skill they have shown in bringing the story to public attention: Nick Wallis, a broadcast journalist and presenter, formerly at BBC Radio Surrey who is now freelance; Richard Brooks, who writes “In The Back” for Private Eye; the much-admired Karl Flinders of…

ANDREW FISHER has spent the week at the Labour Party Annual Conference in Liverpool, where the new Prime Minister continued to confound political editors and expert pundits A Blairite, a Brownite a…

A report obtained by The New Arab documents Israel’s systematic destruction of southern Lebanese towns, including Bint Jbeil, and the displacement of residents.

Mark Perryman recalls the role of Phil Piratin in stopping Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. Phil Piratin was a Communist Party activist and organiser in Stepney, East London, who played a key role in the Cable Street people's blockade which successfully stopped Sir Oswald Mosley leading his British Union of Fascists (BUF) marching through the East End ninety years ago, 4th October 1936. In his autobiographical account Our Flag Stays Red, first published in 1948, Piratin details the community campaigning that not only built the blockade but was to break the support for the BUF in East London which by the march numbered 4,000 paid-up members and countless thousands more supporters.

The fourth in a series of articles by Carl Rowlands on the impact of technology on society and politics. Palantir, in many ways, have become a bogeyman, a corporation which popularly represents the second Trump era. Clive Lewis MP has perfectly encapsulated the public disgust at their growing influence and seemingly unstoppable growth across the British state, from the Metropolitan Police to the NHS and Department of Work and Pensions and beyond. Palantir is a company, incubated by some of the most right-wing characters who struck big in Silicon Valley in the 1990s and 2000s, among them Peter Thiel.

By Jeff Slee I’m reserving judgement on Andy Burnham’s government for now, until we see what they come up with in the rest of this year. But the most interesting parts of Andy Burnham’s speech to Labour’s Conference weren’t the policy proposals on pensions, or housing, or the EU, or electoral reform. They were his attempt to make Labour a party of social democracy, instead of neo-liberalism - even though he didn’t use those words. They were his rejection of the way British society has gone over the last 40 years – his rejection of Thatcherism, and by implication his rejection also of the 1997 – 2010 New Labour government’s continuation of Thatcherism.

Ministers must prepare an Emergency Heat Tariff to cap the cost of heating this winter, the End Fuel Poverty Coalition says, with gas prices already rising 27% year on year from 1st October and fresh forecasts pointing to a further spike in January. Ofgem has set gas at a maximum 7.97p per kilowatt hour for households on the Standard Variable Tariff from 1st October and while predictions for January prices vary, some forecasts show that it could reach the level at which the last government set the Energy Price Guarantee.

The Coalition urges residents to join the International Day of Action Against Palantir, today, Thursday 1st October After a year of campaigning, the Hackney Coalition Against Palantir (HCAP) has welcomed an assurance that Homerton Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust has no current plans to use the controversial NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP). Deputy Chief Executive Tom Nettel outlined the Trust’s position when presenting its digital strategy to Hackney Council’s Adults Health and Integration Scrutiny Commission on 22nd September 2026, according to Coalition representatives who attended. The FDP is an NHS data platform supplied through a contract led by US technology company Palantir.

As predicted, Andy Burnham’s speech to the Labour Party Conference yesterday was full of content, with the proposed National Care Service getting most of the headlines. But the Prime Minister also said he would not rest until there was no homelessness, promising council homes and democratic control of the housing stock. He called water a symbol of what has gone wrong with Britain and pledged legislation to scrap the Thatcher-era ban on public ownership of water companies. He announced a new government body to invest in Britain's electricity grid and he called for a new relationship with the EU, ruling nothing out.

The Socialist Health Association’s Esther Giles responds to Chancellor John Healey’s Labour Party Conference speech. When one strips away the warm rhetoric about red ties and miners’ lamps, the overriding message from John Healey’s speech this week was that “fiscal discipline” was first and foremost in his priorities. And that “fiscal discipline” meant adhering to former Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ Treasury rules. He said that the October budget would be based on “fiscal discipline” in order to provide businesses with Breathing Space and to Give Hope. Healey confirmed that the Government would invest in three maritime projects to strengthen national security and drive growth.

Four parties backed a ban on headscarves for girls under 14, and a child pays the price.