Back in 2010, when the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government began, austerity was the order of the day. The deficit had to be brought down, we were continually told. Public spending was slashed, public sector jobs were cut, wages frozen. We were all in it together, according to then Chancellor of the Exchequer, George
This text first appeared in the newly released Class War magazine. You can read it here. A year into the Boris Johnson administration and his incompetence is obvious. “Wouldn’t it be fun if we had the clown stuck on the zipwire as Prime Minister?” No, it wouldn’t. Typically, the Tories chose their leader because they
Between the first two spikes of the Covid 19 pandemic, Boris Johnson’s true colours have started to appear. This has not been a surprising process for anarchists. While some mainstream voices have suggested that his government has acted in odd ways as a response to the pandemic, it is clear that he and his government
When I started this column in 2016 the initial idea was to write a traditional politics column but from an anarchist perspective. I wanted to write an anarchist account of how British politics was developing to keep it charted in a way that hadn’t really been attempted before. I thought at the time that we’d
Joe Reynolds writes on the phenomenon of the Calais migrant situation as he saw it in 2016, at the height of the media panic, amid Brexit manoeuvrings and a violent French crackdown. The borders of the United Kingdom are militarised with both the language of fear and the chemical burn of tear gas. From the
The UK has a bullish prime minister with a strong majority in parliament. The levers of official power, granted to the Tories in the 2019 election mean that legislation should be relatively easy to pass. Sections of the population opposed to Conservative power have spent the last few weeks preparing themselves for the onslaught that
As mentioned in a recent column and throughout Brexit, the divisions in the UK on membership of the European Union is a Conservative Party issue that the public was invited to get itself embroiled in. The public obliged but in doing so many people voted in such a way to cause the maximum damage to
I wrote on many occasions during the Brexit process that the initial referendum was really an invitation from David Cameron for the British public to become embroiled in a largely internal Tory Party battle. The public duly obliged by siding with either Leave or Remain. Leave wasn’t the result Cameron expected. A general election and
Parliamentary chaos and the looming No Deal Brexit have emboldened the far right. Whether it means marches, street violence or more directed and extremist acts, the next few months will almost certainly see an uptick in far-right activity. Although relatively small numbers of far right activists have counterprotested the #stopthecoup demonstrations so far, these small
Johnson has prorogued parliament, stripping parliamentary oversight at a key moment in order to force through his damaging no-deal Brexit plan. People across the country are responding to this with anger, and rightly so, it is an affront to the notion of British democracy that our legislature should be suspended at a point like this,
At the peak of the cost of living crisis, outsourced migrant cleaners from the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) working at Vodafone HQ launch a campaign for fair pay and proper sick pay, following years of chronic overwork and victimisation.
Last month I wrote about the showy jubilee celebrations and how it wouldn’t be long before the show is over, leaving us with the reality of monarchy.
On July 14th this year, something crazy will be happening.
Content warning for mentions of suicide If people ask me about the democratic state of the United Kingdom, I just point them now to a video of Queen Elizabeth II cutting a cake.
A strike by pub workers in Brighton has turned violent with the aggressive union-busting landlord, Zakaria Abedi, physically assaulting one of the striking workers on Saturday night.
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