Morning Star Editorial: Purge of dissenting MPs is a sign of Starmer’s weakness
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/purge-dissenting-mps-sign-starmers-weakness
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer during a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, in Downing Street, London, on his first official visit to Britain, July 17, 2025…
Just 12 per cent of the public approve of the government’s record, a historic low. Current polling shows the great majority of Labour MPs losing their seats at the next election, either to Reform, or to the new left party struggling to be born, or in Scotland and Wales to nationalist parties.
Certainly, at present it is as easy to see the suspended four — and the already-whipless John McDonnell and Apsana Begum who rebelled a year ago against the two-child benefit cap — securing re-election as independents than as candidates of the Starmer regime.
It is certainly hard to see this move breaking resistance to the new austerity agenda going forward. Only successful leaders can hope to get away with this sort of crackdown.
So this latest exercise in authoritarianism speaks only to Starmer’s loss of capacity to advance his right-wing agenda, as well as to his consigliere Morgan McSweeney’s blinkered view that whatever the problem is the answer lies in attacking the left.
But it is also a challenge to the Labour left. Over the last five years it has consistently failed to find the means to arrest the Starmer-McSweeney purge of the left, often for want of the simple virtue of sticking together when under attack.
The response to the latest suspensions has been robust, in words at least. The left has shown it can inflict defeats on the government, reversing specific policy proposals.
But it is now beyond obvious that only a fighting plan to actually oust Starmer himself has any prospect of reversing Labour’s dismal prospects in time to save the next election. They should take every opportunity — and even create them — to express no-confidence in this government of austerity, war and authoritarianism.
Failure to do so will certainly turbocharge the case for the new socialist party being promoted by Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn. The appeal of that venture rests in part on the perception that Labour is a lost cause.
Starmer’s latest sanctions against dissent tend to make that case. He has flung down the gauntlet — the left in the PLP, the affiliated unions and the membership must pick it up.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/purge-dissenting-mps-sign-starmers-weakness
The rich are a threat to our economy and our democracy
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/rich-are-threat-our-economy-and-our-democracy
Waspi (Women Against State Pension Inequality) campaigners stage a protest on College Green in Westminster, London, as Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves delivers her Budget in the Houses of Parliament, October 30, 2024HMRC’S ignorance about how much tax British billionaires pay exposes the missing factor in government announcements on public spending.
Tight finances are used as excuses to attack pensioners and deny justice to the wronged, like the Waspi women.
Even when — thanks to a welcome revolt against Rachel Reeves’s renewed austerity by Labour MPs — cuts to disability payments are reduced in scope, ministers suggest the pain will be shunted sideways: it will make it harder to lift the two-child benefit cap, or force a regressive freeze on income tax thresholds (so they don’t rise with inflation, distributing the tax burden downwards).
The public accounts committee’s Lloyd Hatton says its report is “not concerned with political debate around the redistribution of wealth,” and is intended solely to address shortcomings in HMRC’s ability to collect the tax owed.
But the doubt it casts on HMRC’s own estimates of the “tax gap” (the difference between tax owed in theory and tax collected) has significant implications for public spending choices.
Besides, the failure to introduce land and wealth taxes is one reason the very wealthy are able to hide their assets, and indeed real incomes, so effectively.
The concentration of extreme wealth among an ever smaller number of people is accelerating. It is pronounced enough — with just 50 families owning as much as the poorer 50 per cent of the British population — to distort the entire economy.
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Starmer’s Labour: cuts to everything except the war machine
https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/starmers-labour-cuts-everything-except-war-machine
The BBC and OBR claim that failing to cut disability benefits could ‘destabilise the economy’ while ignoring the spendthrift approach to tens of billions on military spending that really spirals out of control, argues DIANE ABBOTT MP
THE Labour leadership is adopting a scorched-earth policy to social programmes and public spending, with no section of society safe from their cuts. The consequences will be very grave for some of the poorest in society, for society as a whole and for the Labour Party.
In the first year of a Labour government, we have had cuts to the winter fuel allowance, a refusal to budge on the two-child benefit cap, cuts to sickness and disability benefits, and a tightening of departmental spending overall, which means cuts for some and a squeeze for the NHS.
This list is growing longer all the time. The latest target is the provision of special educational needs (SEN) spending in our schools, which ministers claim is spiralling out of control. There is also the beginning of a concerted PR campaign to abolish the “triple-lock” on the state pension, even though the meagre amount provided is one of the lowest in western Europe and insufficient for a decent retirement.
The main exception to this all-round austerity drive is military spending, which is really spiralling out of control. In fact, the pace of spending cuts elsewhere is designed to fill the real hole in government finances caused by the commitment to raise military spending to 5 per cent of GDP, a promise given to placate Donald Trump by Keir Starmer at the Nato summit.
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Dianne Abbott’s article continues at https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/starmers-labour-cuts-everything-except-war-machine
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva: With the world in crisis, many say end globalisation. I say that would be a mistake
This article is recommended https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/10/world-crisis-end-globalisation-mistake-lula-da-silva
The year 2025 should be a time of celebration, marking eight decades of the United Nations’ existence. But it risks going down in history as the year when the international order built since 1945 collapsed.
The cracks had long been visible. Since the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the intervention in Libya and the war in Ukraine, some permanent members of the security council have trivialised the illegal use of force. The failure to act vis-a-vis the genocide in Gaza represents a denial of the most basic values of humanity. The inability to overcome differences is fuelling a new escalation of violence in the Middle East, the latest chapter of which includes the attack on Iran.
The law of the strongest also threatens the multilateral trading system. Sweeping tariffs disrupt value chains and push the global economy into a spiral of high prices and stagnation. The World Trade Organization has been hollowed out, and no one remembers the Doha development round.
The 2008 financial collapse exposed the failure of neoliberal globalisation, but the world remained locked into the austerity playbook. The choice to bail out the ultra-wealthy and major corporations at the expense of ordinary citizens and small businesses has deepened inequality. In the past 10 years, the $33.9tn (£25tn) accumulated by the world’s richest 1% is equivalent to 22 times the resources needed to eradicate global poverty, according to a report by Oxfam.
The stranglehold on the state’s capacity for action has led to public distrust in institutions. Discontent has become fertile ground for extremist narratives that threaten democracy and promote hate as a political project.
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There is an urgent need to recommit to diplomacy and rebuild the foundations of true multilateralism – one capable of answering the outcry of a humanity fearful for its future. Only then can we stop passively watching the rise of inequality, the senselessness of war and the destruction of our own planet.
- Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is the president of Brazil
This article is recommended https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/10/world-crisis-end-globalisation-mistake-lula-da-silva