robbo203
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Burnham is already spelling out his priorities. Nothing is going to change under the (Anti) Labour government
Streeting says Burnham government will prioritise military over other spending
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jul/22/increased-defence-spending-uk-economic-growth-wes-streeting-military-andy-burnham?shem=dsdf,sharefoc,agadiscoversdl,,sh/x/discover/m1/4
Burnham is already spelling out his priorities. Nothing is going to change under the (Anti) Labour government
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jul/22/increased-defence-spending-uk-economic-growth-wes-streeting-military-andy-burnham?shem=dsdf,sharefoc,agadiscoversdl,,sh/x/discover/m1/4
Anything to be gained from standing a SPGB candidate here when there are no mainstream pro-capitalism parties standing (other than Nigel Facade’s Reform)?
I would endorse what Max suggests. There aren´t many occasions when spending money to cover a lost deposit is justified, but this seems to be one of them. It is likely to be quite a high-profile event, and if there are not even the usual Trot organisations standing to misrepresent the term “socialism”, it might encourage greater curiosity and interest in what the SPGB itself stands for.
Presumably, the EC would need to act quickly to get the ball rolling in this case if the SPGB wants to contest this by election.
One other thing. I remember seeing a party Facebook post yesterday, which I think mentioned that Farage´s decision to force a by-election would cost the UK 200,000 quid. We need to be a bit careful about how we phrase this, as I believe the Reform Party has offered to foot this entire bill.
They must have anticipated this particular criticism of Farage´s opportunist manoeuvrings being wheeled out by his opponents….
The politics of football made glaringly obvious to anyone
Can we surmise what sports and entertainments a socialist society would enjoy?
Much the same, surely, but within a very different kind of social setting. Nothing wrong with a football match, though I prefer rugby myself (hailing from South Africa, we didn’t have much of a tradition of football back then when I was a kid LOL).
TomandBob
There is some truth in what you say about the need to associate socialism with abundance, but I don’t think this is an either/or situation.
Many workers are increasingly concerned about the state of the environment and are disillusioned with the consumerist rat race. There have been studies that point to the fact that beyond a certain point, more money does not make you happier. As someone quipped, the most miserable people in the world are the very rich and the very poor.
We should be thinking of a more balanced approach to life. One of the great “selling points” of socialism, if I can put it like that, is that most of the jobs that we do today in a capitalist society will no longer need to be done in a post-capitalist society (all those jobs to do with handling money, for example). In effect, we can more than double the amount of labour and resources for socially useful production in a socialist society without imposing any greater strain on the environment – simply by diverting all this wasted labour and resources away from these socially useless activities that capitalism necessitates.
This is one of the strongest arguments for socialism. It should be hammered home at every opportunity
56,000 people own three times more wealth than half of humanity
56,000 people own three times more wealth than half of humanity
There may be a hint of what the MHI thinks on the subject of the lower phase in this piece
Yes, that is a very good summary of a vision of a post-capitalist world…
Personally, though, I don’t mind the word “enterprise” being used rather than the more technical-sounding expression, work units or production units. I always remember Ron Cook´s description of socialism as being a “genuine free enterprise” society (if I remember correctly). I thought it was a very innovative example of a sort of “cultural appropriation” (if I could put it like that), which might make supporters of the capitalist free market think twice.
At any rate, it conveys the idea of such qualities as initiative, imagination and human agency that lies at the heart of the concept of “freely associated labour”
It looks like the government of Milei has increased the popularity of the Trotskyists in Argentina; there are predictions that they might win the next election
That’s very interesting. Do you have the source for this prediction that I could cite?
I am constantly coming across FB sites that seem to have a large fan base for Milei, although the people concerned tend to be MAGA types based in the US. British right-wingers have a more ambivalent attitude towards Milei because of the Falklands/Malvinas issue
If the far right are against the EU’s obsession with war with Russia, are they not then preferable, as Orban was in Hungary?
Interesting article on the views of VOX and the Spanish Far Right, which does not seem to be opposed to supporting Ukraine in the Ukraine-Russia war
The Spanish Radical Right under the shadow of the invasion of Ukraine
With Spain back in the news, falling foul of the Orange Blob over NATO, it is worth noting that things are not looking good for the ruling PSOE government. Probably, there will be a new PP government in alliance with the ultra-right VOX party in 2027
It looks like this idea that Trump’s stop-go approach to war/peace with Iran, being linked to insider trading on the stock market, is gaining currency…
I read somewhere that his sprog, Barron, has been in on the act as well (maybe tipped off by his daddy), but that might just be conspiracy theory
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/18/iran-war-bets-ethics-concerns
Not too sure about this, but there is some suggestion that Trump´s stop-go approach to the so-called peace process may be linked to the phenomenon of insider trading in that glorified casino called the stock exchange:
BREAKING: Just 20 minutes before Trump’s announcement that the Strait of Hormuz was open, massive trades hit the market.
Investors sold a combined 7,990 lots of Brent crude futures, a $760 million bet that oil would go down.
These orders were much larger than anything else at the time.
The traders made huge gains.
Unusual.
– Post on X by unusual_whales@unusual_whalesFor context, there is also this – the phenomenon of “dark pools” on the stock market geared to profiteering:
“In 2009, Alexandra Zendrian, writing for Forbes, said, “Dark pools are venues where trading is done off of an exchange to obtain price improvement and not move the price if a large block of stocks is being traded,” — theoretically, a dark pool is just any sort of exchange in financial markets between parties that happens invisibly to the public or ‘retail investor’ eye.
Arguably, the most interesting fact about dark pools right now is its immensely uneven growth vector statistic — dark pools make up, according to more recent reports detailed below, an estimated 65%+ (As of December 2018) of the stock markets daily volume. However, an estimated 7% of all investors even know what they are.”https://medium.com/banz-capital/the-basics-of-a-dark-pool-in-investing-35dd37119ea5
I never heard of the Mayflower gang being called communists!
Oh, you will be surprised by the number of times this is done by “free market” libertarians, imagining in that fertile imagination of theirs that this constitutes decisive proof that “communism does not work”. LOL
Just a quick Google comes up with a long list. Just this one example will suffice:
https://www.heritage.org/markets-and-finance/commentary/pilgrims-beat-communism-free-market
