News and Analysis

Petition calls on Polanski to make no-cuts stand The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) all-Britain steering committee has welcomed a new petition launched by leading trade unionists calling on the Green Party leader Zack Polanski to mobilise his party in the struggle against local council austerity. The petition – launched by 20 current and former members of trade union ...

By Mariam Kamish, Secretary Caerphilly Trades Council  In scenes of pandemonium, the chair of Caerphilly Council’s Joint Scrutiny Committee shouted me down, demanded I leave the podium, and threatened to have me thrown out of the council’s 2026 budget meeting. I had called on councillors to break ranks and table a motion to overturn last year’s decision to close ten ...

By ISG and CWI reporters Tens of thousands mobilised in a day of action in Minneapolis on 23 January against the state repression of Trump’s administration and its brutal deployment of three thousand ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents to the state of Minnesota. This mass mobilisation was termed an ‘economic blackout’ by sections of the capitalist media, ‘a ...

By James Scott, Cardiff University Socialist Students In December, I helped to get a motion passed into Cardiff University Students Union policy, mandating it to lobby the university to ‘open the books’ to its finances, stop academic cuts by using its hundreds of millions of pounds of reserves, and campaign against cuts. Cardiff University announced 400 job cuts in 2025 ...

By Alex Sampson HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) confirmed this week that, after thousands of families were unjustly stripped of their child benefit, its controversial benefit fraud detection system has been fixed. The system, which was supposed to stop child benefit to people who left the country and did not return within eight weeks, was found to be deeply flawed. ...

Socialist Party statement The eruption of enthusiasm for Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s Your Party in summer 2025 was a product of the huge forces exerted by the acute need for the working class to have its own party. They are forces that are greater now than at any point since Tony Blair completed his counter-revolution to turn the Labour ...

By Mark Best The establishment insider’s outsider, Nigel Farage, spent the week burnishing his party Reform UK’s credentials as a party that will be safe for the very richest in society. On Monday 12 January, former Tory chancellor Nadhim Zahawi announced that he was joining Reform as the country needs a “glorious revolution”. Zahawi, whose career in the Tory party ...

By John Williams, Cardiff Unite hospitality member The McDonald’s sexual harassment scandal is back in the news again. Investigations two years ago revealed widespread sexual abuse and harassment of many teenage workers. A group of five trade union bodies, including the bakers’ union (BFAWU) and the TUC (Trades Union Congress) have said that McDonald’s had violated international labour standards and ...

US Forces out of Latin America For workers’ unity and socialism By Tony Saunois (Committee For A Workers’ International) The kidnaping of Venezuelan President, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Celia Flores, through the military assault by US imperialism has, in a dramatic fashion, ushered in 2026. This naked colonial attack by the Trump regime will have profound consequences in Venezuela, ...

Build mass workers’ parties to challenge the capitalist system In the days since Trump’s abduction and arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro shocked the world, the motivation for and planning of this attack have become clearer. Maduro is being held in New York facing a ‘trial’ on drug and weapons charges. All the rhetoric about ‘narco-terrorism’ won’t cover up the ...