David Cameron, the new leader of the Tories, has already had an effect on British politics — his election has shifted all three main parties into competion over the centre?right political ground. That, rather than drink problems, was why Charles Kennedy was forced out of the Liberal Democrat leadership last week.
While George Bush was announcing an end to US efforts to "rebuild" Iraq’s oil industry and basic services this week, contracts were being awarded to build a $1 billion US embassy complex in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone.
Explaining the government’s decision to reconsider how far it can attack incapacity benefit, a government minister told the Financial Times, "To open up another front now would be mad."
Whether it’s the attack on pensions and schools in this country, Italian students protesting against education "reforms", or the Irish Ferries seafarers occupying their vessels, there is a common theme to many of the stories in this week’s Socialist Worker.
For years we have been told by trade union leaders to wait for Gordon Brown to deliver us from Tony Blair. We are assured that even if Brown won’t bring radical change, he will at least be a pointer back to Old Labour.
US vice-president Dick Cheney stepped up White House attacks on critics of the Iraq war this week. He declared that politicians who say Americans were sent into battle based on a lie are engaging in "revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety."
"The French have got it right," was the cry from some quarters after the riots in three of England’s northern towns four years ago.
"Riots are the voice of the unheard," said the great black civil rights leader Martin Luther King in response to the uprisings that swept US cities in the 1960s.
From inside the bunker that 10 Downing Street is increasingly becoming we are told that Tony Blair is "full of gusto". The reality is that Blair is fading from power.
Downing Street more and more resembles a mad hatter’s tea party these days. Not content with lecturing European Union leaders on the joys of neo-liberalism Tony Blair let it be known that he regarded minister for work and pensions David Blunkett as being too soft in his proposals to force those on disability benefit back to work.
The usual suspects seized on the tragic events in the Lozells area of Birmingham last weekend to proclaim, yet again, that "multiculturalism has failed".
There was scarcely a part of the world where the British Empire did not intervene to draw a line on the map based on ethnic or religious divisions. This led inevitably to conflict even where none had existed before.
