Latest editorial
Prime Minister Boris Johnson signs the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement at 10 Downing Street, London
THE trade agreement passed today “hardwires Thatcherite economics into Britain’s permanent agreement with the EU,” Labour’s No Holding Back initiative warned today.
In an analysis of the deal released just ahead of the vote, Labour MPs Ian Lavery and Jon Trickett and councillor and former MP Laura Smith said the “whole agreement amounts to market triumphalism,” noting that it defines its own objective as “the free movement of capital and payments related to transactions liberalised under this agreement.”
Any economic damage consequent on the deal will hit the poorest hardest, they argue – while measures required to stop it doing so, such as “a huge financial aid package to Britain’s struggling regions, a campaign to drive up productivity across industry, including direct intervention to build new industries [and] the refinancing of our public services” appear to be ruled out in the text of the agreement.
BEN CHACKO says in different ways, the centenary of the General Strike and that of Fidel Castro’s birth point to priority tasks for the British left in the coming year
US tariffs have had Von der Leyen bowing in submission, while comments from the former European Central Bank leader call for more European political integration and less individual state sovereignty. All this adds up to more pain and austerity ahead, argues NICK WRIGHT
Starmer sabotaged Labour with his second referendum campaign, mobilising a liberal backlash that sincerely felt progressive ideals were at stake — but the EU was then and is now an entity Britain should have nothing to do with, explains NICK WRIGHT