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Jobs for the boys... in space
With Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng's appointment of Lord David Willetts as the chair of the as-yet-unlaunched 'UK Space Agency,' Tory cronyism is potentially going where no man has gone before, reports SOLOMON HUGHES
Kwasi Kwarteng said Lord David Willetts “will bring a wealth of expertise to the role” — Willetts’s expertise includes a very long Tory career, beginning as a researcher for Margaret Thatcher, with stints as a minister under John Major and Cameron
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
BORIS JOHNSON’S Tory government is struggling to find a mission for itself, beyond just hanging on to look after the rich and look after their friends. Without much of a vision of the future, all that seems to be left is a kind of crony capitalism — with the emphasis on crony.
In the latest jobs for the boys move, Tory Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng appointed former Tory Business Minister David Willetts as chair of the UK Space Agency Board at the end of April. Willetts will help run the UK Space Agency, which spends around £500m a year of public money encouraging the British space sector, alongside Paul Bate, who was made chief executive last year.
To add to the crony-ish feel of the UK Space Agency, Bate was David Cameron and Nick Clegg’s “health policy” adviser during the Tory-led coalition government and went on to be “director of NHS services” at Tory-favoured health privatiser Babylon Health before joining the Space Agency. Before working for Cameron, Bate was a health adviser to then-PM Tony Blair, so he is not quite as narrowly party-political as David Willetts.
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