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If the ‘adults are back in charge’ we’re in deep trouble
SOLOMON HUGHES tracks down the dark and disturbing history of one of politics' most tiresome refrains and finds it has never meant anything other than war, neoliberalism — and the childish refusal to properly justify either
When centrists and right-wingers talk about the ‘grown-ups in the room’ they are either selling the idea of technocratic calm replacing immature demands for economic justice — or war.
NICK WRIGHT considers how the isolation of Israel and a new film on the controversial Italian communist leader are creating new reference points for Italy’s left
CARLOS MARTINEZ says Cuba’s achievements in the face of a criminal blockade are startling, but the island’s future if the United States succeeds in crushing it looks bleak
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports that far-right MPs who mobbed the event organised by Hadash may have helped raise awareness of the brutality of the Israeli right
Born on this day in 1931, the heroic revolutionary faces a dangerous new wave of White House aggression. We must treat his birthday as a rallying cry to resist the illegal siege of Cuba, writes ROGER McKENZIE
RAMZY BAROUD decries the rats of Gaza, the rodent and human type. Both abound as profiteering from tragedy reaches obscene levels
ONE of the more cringe current centrist slogans is “the adults are back in charge” — meaning that there is a sense of maturity being shown by the Labour and Tory parties converging on the same old market-oriented politics.
Centrists like talking about “the grown-ups in the room” bringing technocratic calm to replace immature demands for public ownership or more taxation of the rich. It is a shallow argument, and it’s also another case where centrists have been so scared of a touch of socialism that they ended up borrowing an argument from the right.
When Keir Starmer fans make the “listen to the grown-ups” argument, it is supposed to make them seem mature — as if they are one of the grown-ups who need listening to. But it has the opposite effect, making it sound like they are the child who, unable to get the other kids to play with them, is calling for the “grown-ups” to come and help them out.
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