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One good thing about this will be the demise of TUSC. They have offered their name to the new party pending registration but, judging by this result on 7 August, that would be the kiss of death:
CANNOCK CHASE Hednesford Green Heath
JONES, Paul (Reform UK) 525
PEARSON, Alan (Labour Party) 230
HEWITT, Phil (Conservative Party) 126
ROCK, Rachel Lauren (Green Party) 101
JAGGER, Sharon Denise (Independent) 31
DRYHURST, Terry (UKIP) 5
KNOX, Gareth (Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition) 1We hadn’t expected another local by-election before the full council elections next May and certainly not in August, the height of the holiday season. But another one has been called in Hounslow on 21 August following the death of one of the councillors for Cranford Ward.
As we weren’t expecting one we have no more copies of our non-candidate local election leaflet. So we are using the surplus of leaflets printed for the Durham miners gala. 250 of these were distributed door to day and a further 600 will be next Thursday.
We met the Reform Party candidate, Khuswant Singh, supporting a light blue turban. Their names suggest that the Labour, Tory and Green candidates are also of Sikh background. This reflects the composition of the ward, 52% classifying themselves in the 2021 census as “Indian”. The fifth candidate, for the LibDems, has a Rumanian name. Nothing wrong with that as it indicates an integration into politics here.
https://www.hounslow.gov.uk/elections-voting/statement-persons-nominated-councillor-cranford
The Reform Party leaflet does not mention immigration, only potholes and fly-tipping. The Tory one does with a photo of their candidate pointing at a hotel in the ward used to accommodate asylum seekers and stating that “the safety of our children and women is being compromised”. They must be really desperate in out-prejudicing the Reform Party.
The ward is normally a safe Labour one, in fact the safest in Hounslow (over 70% of those who voted). If they lose Labour will be in dire trouble.
There another end of the world scenario you have missed — a comet or asteroid on a collision course with Earth. The late comrade Pieter Lawrence wrote a novel about this. In fact in it socialism comes about in sort of way you are suggesting. People — and governments — cooperate to deal with the threat and end up establishing socialism without setting to. It may not be your cup of tea as it’s not stupid humans who are cause the threatened disaster.
It can read here:
https://libcom.org/article/last-conflict
And here’s the review in the Socialist Standard:
By coincidence, Imposs1904 has just posted on his blog this article from the August 1937 Socialist Standard analysing the economic stakes at issue in the Spanish Civil War for the various capitalist states at the time.
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2025/08/what-is-behind-governments-spanish.html
Yes, that’s quite a good article setting out the various theories about the nature of banks and banking and very useful as a background to what the issues are. Some of the authors they refer to challenge the view that banks are essentially different from other lenders such as finance companies and pawnbrokers. Good point: if banks can create money from thin air, why can’t these other lenders? But then the theory that a single bank can create credit out of thin air has been thoroughly debunked, both in theory and in practice.
Yes, as earlier this year here:
Not quite as bad as the German Greens who, when in government until a few months ago, were real war-mongers.
“As many of you know, I joined the Greens a few months ago to vote for Zack Polanski. He’s run a brilliant campaign on an eco-socialist platform and I’m really happy to have been a vocal supporter.”
Here’s his online election campaign material. I can’t see anything socialist in it but he evidently thinks a lot of himself.
Interview with him in Socialist Worker here:
Interview with Zack Polanski: ‘Movement building is incredibly important’
Grace Blakely says: “It seems clear that Corbyn, Sultana, and the Greens will form an electoral pact along the lines of the left bloc in France – any other strategy would be absurd factionalism.”
It doesn’t seem that clear round where I live. Here the Greens have an electoral pact with the LibDems. All 5 Green councillors have been elected in 3-member wards where, by angreement, only 2 LibDems and 1 Green stood. But I suppose an electoral bloc between the Greens, the Corbynites and the LibDems could be imagined. All reformists together.
If the state of Israel that the zionists had set up in Palestine had not been backed and built up militarily by the US for its own purposes, its rulers would have been forced to compromise with the neighbouring states and something different might have emerged. Maybe something like Lebanon, where different “communities” have managed to co-exist more or less peacefully for most of the time. Certainly Israel would not have been able to develop nuclear weapons and bomb all its neighbours with impunity.
But this is just speculation and we are where we are.
One Trotsky group that won’t be infiltrating the new party — the “Socialist” Equality Party:
Comment on the Talking About Socialism website:
“In Facebook discussions on the New party there is already an intolerence towards Socialists and communists from the supporters of a lowest common denominator old Labour politics for the new party. This party is not for you or is not your bag and so on. And this comes from people arguing for a broad party, but not broad enough for Socialist and communists.
As Communists/Socialists we do not go with the Social Democratic flow. We campaign to persuade members of the party to become Socialist/Communists and attempt to make the politics of the new Party Socialist. The nostalgia for the welfare state and the post war settlement will not be political effective. The political and economic circumstances are vastly different today.
Talking vaguely about Public ownership without specifying its nature and extent is an unrealistic attempt, to repeat the limited state ownership of some sectors of the economy while leaving the rest of the economy in Capitalist hands. Again this is totally inadequate to deal with failing British Capitalism. The aim should be to abolish Capitalism not manage it.“
Jeremy Corbyn’s pipe dream (from yesterday’s Guardian):
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/29/jeremy-corbyn-labour-failed-politics-new-party
The original tweet announcing the new party stated:
“We will only fix the crises in our society with a mass redistribution of wealth and power. That means taxing the very richest in our society.”
In his article Corbyn is placing the emphasis on redistributing power rather than wealth and writes only of making “the wealthiest in society pay a bit more in tax to ensure that everyone can live in dignity”.
Since dividing up even all of the wealth of the wealthiest wouldn’t increase that of each member of the population by very much, no wonder he emphasises redistributing power, which is not quite so nebulous.
But, given the continuation of capitalism, who makes the decisions is the not the most important factor but what capitalism obliges the decision-makers, whoever they are and however they are chosen, to decide.
The Tories must be pretty desperate if they are aiming to emulate Milei to try to regain popularity:
The Anarcho-capitalists who infiltrated and virtually took over the Young Conservatives in the 1980s and 90s will be pleased (that is, if they are still Anarcho-capitalists).
On the contrary. It was Trotsky himself who initiated this in 1934 when he instructed his followers to “enter” the French equivalent of the Labour Party (not all of them obeyed):
