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On 23 December 2013, five men broke into a house in Switzerland. Prowling the villa's hallways, situated on the uber-exclusive shores of Lake Geneva, they took only photographs, later releasing the images to the world as a cursory catalogue of the building's contents.

Among those items were hand-woven oriental rugs, an 18th-century jewel-encrusted Quran, and priceless paintings by celebrated Soviet-era artists - many of them believed to have been lifted from the State History Museum in Tashkent, more than 6,000km away.

The men were no ordinary burglars, but dissidents opposed to the tyranny of Uzbekistan's then-president, Islam Karimov. The home was one of many belonging to the premier's daughter, Gulnara Karimova, herself a businesswoman, diplomat, popstar and, as was fast emerging, alleged head of a criminal syndicate at the heart of one of the largest corruption cases in history.

Precipitated by a bitter rift with her father, Karimova's fall from grace was swift. Chief among the allegations to come would be that her organization, known only as 'The Office', had solicited hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes from Russia's largest telecoms provider, Mobile Telesystems (MTS), in exchange for access to the Uzbek market.

So damaging were the revelations that investors later sued MTS, with one UK private equity group - Hunnewell Partners, headquartered in the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea - leading a charge through the US courts after claiming to have sustained losses to its stake in the Russian communications giant as a result of the scandal.

The problem? Technically, it hadn't. Drawing on leaked corporate documents, public records and court proceedings, Byline Times can now reveal the London firm appears to have in fact been acting on behalf of one of Vladimir Putin's most trusted confidants: Roman Abramovich.

Not only shedding fresh light on the former Chelsea FC owner's long-running efforts to conceal his interests from Western authorities, these findings further provide a window into Abramovich's apparent ties to yet another autocratic, post-Soviet regime.

Because Hunnewell isn't just a British private equity group. Its founders are also close enough business partners of Georgia's very own 'pro-Russian' ruling oligarch, Bidzina Ivanishvili, for critics to view the firm as a crucial enabler of the spiralling human rights crisis that has engulfed the South Caucasian country since the outbreak of war in Ukraine.

"Hunnewell Partners is primarily a political player in Georgia," said Hans Gutbrod, a professor of public policy at Tbilisi's Ilia State University. "Exercising a significant hold on the Georgian economy, it's a company that could only operate with Ivanishvili's blessing, and in turn also works directly for his interests."

The Fall of Googoosha

Born 1972, Gulnara Karimova was once one of the most powerful people in Central Asia. The eldest daughter of Uzbek President Islam Karimov, who ruled the repressive former Soviet Republic with an iron fist until his death in 2016, she rose to become not only her country's Deputy Foreign Minister, but also its Permanent UN Representative.

At one time tipped as her father's most likely successor, her passions were perhaps more varied than your average dictatorial heir-apparent. A self-styled "poet, mezzo-soprano, designer and exotic Uzbekistan beauty," per her Twitter bio, she would also establish her own fragrance, fashion and jewelry lines, penning ill-fated screenplays and releasing duets with the likes of French actor Gérard Depardieu.

It was just four months after the launch of her debut album (Goog...

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On Thursday, some big news landed regarding the future of the climate movement in Britain. Just Stop Oil announced that: "Three years after bursting on the scene in a blaze of orange, at the end of April we will be hanging up the hi-vis."

"It is the end of soup on Van Goghs, cornstarch on Stonehenge and slow marching in the streets. But it is not the end of trials, of tagging and surveillance, of fines, probation and years in prison," the group said in a statement.

They will hold a final action in Parliament Square on 26 April.

During their short history, Just Stop Oil supporters have been arrested 3,300 times and imprisoned 180 times for, in their words, "having broken laws that were drafted by the fossil fuel industry". In June 2023, the Met Police said the group had cost it more than £4.5 million in just six weeks.

But while the organisation may be ending, they continue to face the force of the law. Seven of their activists are in prison serving sentences of up to four years, and eight are on remand. In the next few months, 16 more are due to be sentenced.

Byline Times' Josiah Mortimer (JM) spoke to Just Stop Oil spokesperson Mel Carrington (MC), who has been a core activist with the group from the beginning.

It's the end of an era for the opinion-dividing climate action group. But what's next?

JM: What's behind this decision to 'hang up your hi-vis'?

MC: It was something we'd been thinking about for a while, probably since we claimed a win when Labour came to power, but it didn't really make much of a splash, and we were thinking about what we'd do from there.

It just became ever more apparent that our current focus is not achieving what we need.

Looking at the science, looking at what's going on, looking at the global environment post Trump. We've got a poly-crisis, and we need a much broader based approach to resist.

So we've been thinking about ending the campaign for a while, and it just seemed like a good moment to do it.

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JM: Does it also reflect that a lot of JSO activists have been imprisoned? It must have been a very tiring couple of years as a movement.

MC: I think the whole climate movement has been up against it for years. It's run by volunteers and individuals, and little groups across the country. Just Stop Oil is no different. We're now mainly funded by individual donations, small donations, and people have thrown their heart and soul into it, and you can't keep doing that up against the might of the fossil fuel industry and the violent apparatus of the state. Inevitably, I think there's a bit of fatigue.

But we're really keen to frame this as a win for the climate movement as a whole. And I will be the first to say that the credit isn't all down to Just Stop Oil. Obviously, there are lots of groups. I was speaking to the Weald Action Group this morning, who are frankly hopping mad about our statement, because they've had some fantastic wins in the courts, and they do great work.

JM: Who made this decision? Is it collectively, from a group of volunteers? Was it a steering group? Most people won't understand how those decisions are made.

MC: There are working groups with different jobs. The group that determines strategy makes decisions at the strategic level. We look at everything, how we're mobilising, what kind of press we're getting, the finances, the energy in the system. All of that feeds into the decision-making.

We've just got to the point where we feel the external environmen...

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A new alliance of campaign groups has been launched to get 4x4s off the roads in the UK.

Green activists are stepping up their opposition to sports utility vehicles - meant for off-road use - taking over British cities and towns.

The SUV Alliance - backed by groups like AdFree Cities, Mums for Lungs and Clean Cities - say SUVs are fast becoming 'the norm' due to car manufacturers promoting them in search of higher profits, and government 'inaction' over their rise.

They argue SUVs are reducing street space for other transport modes, such as scooters and e-bikes, and holding back the market for smaller, affordable electric vehicles.

Despite progress in fuel efficiency and electrification, the trend toward heavier and less efficient vehicles like SUVs has largely wiped out the improvements in energy consumption achieved in the car sector in recent decades. Sports vehicles emit roughly 20% more emissions than an average medium-sized car, according to the International Energy Association.

The SUV Alliance's first demand is for the Government to overhaul Vehicle Excise Duty to introduce higher taxes on the most polluting vehicles, based on their weight.

It highlights that 52% of the top 100 vehicle models sold in 2023 were too wide for minimum on-street parking spaces in major cities. In effect, councils and taxpayers are subsidising users of the prestige mega-vehicles.

The campaign calls for maximum width, length, and height limits for new car sales from 2030 to prevent oversized vehicles.

And they advocate for a national 'tobacco-style' ban on SUV advertising (including hybrid and electric SUVs) in outdoor spaces.

The campaign argues that advertising is driving demand for larger SUVs, rather than demand creating the supply.

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Backers want to see mandatory 'eco-scores' published for all new electric vehicles, combining engine efficiency and lifecycle CO2 emissions, to make clear their impact on the planet.

The campaign also wants to empower local authorities to introduce 'progressive parking tariffs' on heavier, bigger, and more polluting vehicles, due to their climate impact and danger for road users.

It cites examples like Paris - and in England, Bath (Somerset) and Islington (London) - which have introduced increased parking charges for larger vehicles.

The SUV Alliance encourages supporters to share the manifesto with local MPs and councillors to introduce anti-SUV policies.

Green Party Baroness, Jenny Jones, hosted a parliamentary launch on Wednesday of the new campaign to reverse the trend towards ever larger Sports Utility Vehicles in the UK.

Baroness Jones said: "Sales of SUVs have leapt up in the last two decades, yet many urban streets and car parking bays are simply too small to accommodate the increasing girth of these vehicles.

"I like what Paris has done to discourage their use, by charging the largest cars as much as three times more to park. In the UK, Bath and Islington councils have introduced similar measures. The government should encourage other councils to replicate these efforts."

A spokesperson for the campaign branded SUVs and 4x4s 'more polluting, more expensive and more dangerous to other road users' - yet they are fast becoming the norm in the UK.

Baroness Jones added: "I wish this new alliance every success with their aim of reversing the growth of these vehicles. SUVs pollute and are often owned and driven by wealthier citizens at the expense of those in less wealthy areas. They feel safer to drive, but are much less safe for any pedestrians and cyclists they collide with."

The campaign launch foll...

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

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At a recent think tank event in Washington, Donald Trump's foreign policy was described as "domineering, arbitrary, and extractive." I agree with all those terms, but I would have added a fourth descriptor - "values-free" - in the sense that this administration appears to make no distinction between democracies and autocracies when it comes to making its foreign policy decisions.

If you are small, weak or dependent on the US in some way, this administration is happy to bully you to try to extract concessions, regardless of whether you are a traditional ally or enemy of the US.

Thus, we have a situation where the US is willing to impose tariffs on its closest trading partners, its geographical neighbours, and its allies in the transatlantic security alliance, such as Canada, Mexico and the EU, even though this will cause devastating economic harm to all involved, including the US itself.

Thus, the US is threatening to seize Greenland from Denmark, a NATO ally, by force if necessary.

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Thus, the US is threatening to violate a decades old treaty, in order to take back control of the Panama Canal.

Thus, the US is willing to troll Canadians, about turning their country into the 51st state of America.

By contrast, the Trump administration seems willing to offer grace to countries whose leaders are as ruthless and unprincipled as Trump himself. If you have something to sell - like rare minerals, to trade - like new market access, or to offer - like cooperation on immigration, this administration is willing to do business with you, no matter what your human rights or democracy record.

Thus, Russia is offered the prospect of sanctions relief in return for stopping its war of aggression against Ukraine, whilst Ukraine, the injured party, is likely to be required to accept punitive terms for peace, including the permanent loss of at least 20% of its territory, and perhaps even the replacement of Zelensky's Government with a more biddable version in Kyiv.

Thus, Israel is given carte blanche to resume its pounding of Gaza, and to indulge in the notion of expelling Palestinians forever from that territory, so that Trump can move in and develop it as a real estate opportunity.

Thus, the administration has no qualms in deporting hundreds of illegal immigrants to El Salvador, a country with a dire human rights record, moreover without any due process to verify whether those involved are indeed Venezuelan gang members, as the administration alleges, or genuine asylum seekers with a valid claim for refugee status in the US.

Thus, the administration's "best friend" in Europe is Viktor Orban, the authoritarian ruler in Hungary.

Thus, the administration seems to have little to say about the ongoing democracy crackdowns in Georgia or Turkey.

Thus, the administration's main concern with China seems to be the challenge it poses to America's influence in the Asia-Pacific, rather than its threats to seize Taiwan by force, aggressive actions against American allies such as the Philippines in the South China Seas, or oppressive treatment of its own citizens, including in Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet.

Thus, the administration's main beef with Iran similarly seems to be its geopolitical challenge to US interests in the Middle East, rather than any concerns about its dire domestic human rights record.

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Rece...

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A group of voters have joined together to file a 'groundbreaking' legal claim against Reform UK, after it allegedly failed to properly respond to their requests for what personal information the party held on them.

Good Law Project is bringing a case on behalf of the claimants after it created a tool in the lead up to the general election that allowed voters to ask political parties what information they had on them through a Data Subject Access Request (DSAR) and to demand the party stop using that information.

Around 1,800 people used the tool to contact Nigel Farage's party and, of those surveyed, 96% said that Reform had failed to respond to their data requests, thereby breaching its legal obligations. Reform was the worst performer of all the major political parties, according to GLP.

Between June-July 2024, voters submitted requests to Reform UK for their personal info and for the party to cease processing their data.

Reform UK was required to respond to these requests within one month, but failed to meet this deadline, according to the legal submission to the High Court.

Only after receiving a formal letter before action in October 2024 did Reform UK respond, claiming they had "no record" of the individuals in their systems, except for the original requests.

But GLP believes Reform UK's identical responses to all the individuals were inadequate and likely false - since Reform UK's own privacy policy states they "maintain a profile for each registered voter" by "merging" the Electoral Register with other data from third-party sources.

The claimant suspects Reform UK may be processing so-called special category data (including political opinions) about the individuals without proper legal basis.

The voters - 'data subjects' in the eyes of the law - have allegedly suffered "concern, worry, uncertainty and distress" due to Reform UK's handling of their data and ignoring their requests.

GLP wants the court to order Reform UK to comply with the data requests, pay compensation for non-material damage, and cover legal costs.

Good Law Project through its lawyers, Pallas Partners LLP (Pallas), wrote formally to Reform UK to challenge its refusal to meet its obligations under the law. Reform failed to respond to the legal letter, but sent out "identical emails", claiming to hold no data on any of them. It never responded to the demand to stop targeting those voters who requested it, the lawyers state.

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Reform has reportedly ignored further legal letters from Pallas which sought more information about its process for handling DSARs and challenged Reform's contention that it held no data on any of the individuals.

Now 51 people have opted to take further action collectively and challenge Reform in the High Court, under a novel legal mechanism embedded in the UK's GDPR data protection law.

Article 80 (1) of GDPR allows Good Law Project to represent the claimants as a group of victims of data protection infringements. Pallas is acting for Good Law Project in this challenge.

An anonymous claimant involved in this legal challenge said: "After receiving unwanted communications from Reform during early 2024, I joined this case because I believe it's crucial to hold all organisations wholly accountable for protecting personal data.

"Reform's data breaches highlight the importance of transparency and responsibility required in safeguarding all individ...

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

"Never let a good crisis go to waste", is a political cliche because it captures an obvious truth. Moments of great upheaval create opportunities to do things that might have been politically impossible before. Rachel Reeves appeared to acknowledge that we are at such a moment now with her repeated observation in her Spring Statement that "the world has changed".

Yet this most unimaginative and orthodox of chancellors shows little sign of being prepared to seize the opportunities that the chaos unleashed by Donald Trump's return to the White House presents. Instead we have a government that seems content to react to events rather than shape them.

To be fair to the Government, circumstances have already forced them to take some tough but necessary decisions that it might otherwise have avoided. It has had to bring forward the date by which defence spending will rise to 2.5% of GDP to 2027. To pay for that, they are making some modest reforms to the welfare system that should save £4.8 billion a year and has announced plans to cut civil service numbers. The soaring welfare bill was clearly unsustainable and the huge rise in civil service numbers was hard to justify. Some effort to trim both is the least one should expect in a crisis.

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Adam Bienkov

Certainly these measures were enough to deliver on Reeves's immediate objective which was to restore the Government's headroom under Reeves's own self-imposed fiscal rules that has since been wiped out by slower growth and higher borrowing costs. That will earn the Government some credit with the financial markets, which should buy them some insurance against further global market volatility. Indeed, Deutsche Bank's fixed income analysts earlier this month reported a growing appetite for UK assets in part in response to the willingness of the Starmer Government's willingness to make cuts.

Nonetheless, it is unlikely to be enough to spare Reeves further difficult choices come the Autumn when she delivers her next budget. The Government is already having to issue more than £300 billion of gilts in the next financial year and the swelling interest bill is swallowing an ever rising share of government income. Meanwhile, as the OBR noted, it would only take a small rise in interest rates, or continued weak productivity growth, to wipe out her headroom again. The central OBR forecast also doesn't account for the impact of a Trump a trade war, which would crush growth. At the same time, defence spending will surely need to hit 3% before the end of this parliament. No wonder most City economists expect taxes to have to rise.

Given the magnitude of events, what was most striking about Reeves's statement was its timidity. She, and indeed much of the UK political and media class, continue to be trapped by pre-crisis thinking, not least the way in which the fiscal rules continue to set the political terms of trade. The result is that the Government should find itself in the days before the chancellor's statement locked in an absurd debate with the OBR over whether an extra £500 billion of welfare savings were needed to meet a fiscal rule based on a forecast of what might happen in three years time. This is dancing on a pinhead stuff.

What was missing from the chancellor's statement was any sign of the Government rising to the level of events, recognising the shifting of the Overton ...

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"There is nothing Labour about working people being made to pay the price for economic irresponsibility," Rachel Reeves told MPs on Wednesday as she set out her economic Spring Statement.

Yet despite her claims to the contrary, the reality is that many working people are already being made to pay the price by this Government.

Those forced to take the biggest hit so far are the poor and disabled.

According to the Government's own figures, the Chancellor's planned cuts to disability benefits will hit one-in-five families with a disabled member, leaving them thousands of pounds a year worse off.

This will lead to real hardship for hundreds of thousands of people.

According to the Department of Work and Pensions' own impact assessment, published earlier today, an estimated 250,000 people, including 50,000 children, will now be pushed into poverty as a direct result of the Chancellor's planned cuts to disability and carers allowances.

As the charity Save the Children warned today, unless ministers change course, "this will be the first Labour Government ever to preside over a significant rise in child poverty."

Reeves claims she has no choice but to impose these cuts, due to the dire economic inheritance left by the Conservatives.

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However, while the poor and disabled, in both the UK and around the world, are being asked to pick up the tab for this inheritance, others are notably being spared.

Despite rising demands among Labour MPs for new wealth taxes, Reeves today ruled out any new increases on either the wealthy or corporations.

And when pushed by the Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey at Prime Minister's Questions, to rule out his reported plans to actually slash taxes on tech corporations, in order to appease Elon Musk and the White House, Keir Starmer pointedly failed to do so.

Reeves today justified her cuts by insisting that the Government had to be "responsible" with its budgets, unlike the preveious Conservative government.

Yet while there is a need to reduce the ballooning level of welfare payments post-Covid, the Government's plans to simply slash payments now are likely to simply shunt the burden of these increased costs elsewhere.

As charities and local government experts have already warned, the steep cuts to support for disabled people will place massive extra pressure on already overstretched local authority budgets.

The increase in child and adult poverty rates will also inevitably increase the burden on the NHS and other public services in both the short and long term. The Government's huge cuts to international aid will also simply store up bigger problems for the future, as efforts to tackle rising global instability and refugee flows are affected.

Reeves' spokespeople today insisted that it simply isn't possible for the UK to "tax and spend" our way to growth. They also boasted that the Government's planning reforms are expected to add significantly to the size of the economy over the coming years, without additional taxpayer expenditure.

With the single exception of the military, which is in line for significant increases to its budgets, Reeves' budget was a rejection of exactly the sort of Attlee-style Keynesian economics both she and Starmer had promised in the years running up to entering government.

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Government plans to tackle the housing crisis and boost the economy have been slammed as a "pay-to-kill" system for developers that will lead to "the injury and killing of protected species".

This week, the Planning and Infrastructure Bill cleared its second reading in the House of Commons with a majority of 256 votes.

The Bill, the Government has argued, will remove unnecessary environmental obstacles to development, with Angela Rayner saying in December that, "we can't have a situation where a newt is more protected than people who desperately need housing".

Environmental groups and conservationists have expressed concerns about its impact on animal welfare and biodiversity loss, branding it a "sledgehammer approach to crack the largely mythical nut that nature blocks development".

Speaking before this week's vote, Rayner, deputy prime minister and housing secretary, stressed the importance of the Bill to combat the housing crisis and help the Government deliver 1.5 million new homes by 2029.

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To speed up the planning process, the Bill proposes to legally allow developers to bulldoze habitats without finding out what wildlife lives there, so long as they pay into a newly established Nature Restoration Fund administered by Natural England - the Government's environmental watchdog.

The fund will allow developers to contribute financially to off-site nature conservation efforts to offset biodiversity loss resulting from their development projects. Environmentalists have dubbed it a "licence to kill".

UK law requires developers to conduct surveys, apply for licenses to disturb protected species and provide detailed plans explaining how they will ensure wildlife, such as dormice, hedgehogs and badgers, are not harmed during a project's construction phase.

By removing this requirement, critics argue the Government is giving the green light for adders and great crested newts to be squashed by diggers, for trees to be felled with bats and their dependent young still roosting in them, for nests with chicks to end up in the wood chipper and for valuable habitats, like ancient woodlands, heathland and meadows, to be flattened along with all the wildlife they support.

Keir Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves have justified their watering down of wildlife protections by blaming species like bats and newts for unnecessarily blocking and slowing down development projects, as former PM Boris Johnson did in 2020. Earlier this month Reeves expressed her frustration over environmental regulations, reportedly saying, "We can't have newt counting holding up housing developments."

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The Government's scapegoating of protected species has infuriated ecologists and environmental charities including Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (ARC) Trust, Friends of the Earth, The Wildlife Trusts, Greenpeace UK, Bat Conservation Trust and Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM).

Wildlife campaigner and writer Dominic Dyer accused the Government of being "hell-bent" on demonising both wildlife and those who stand up to protect nature and biodiversity from developments.

"By further weakening environmental protections to build million...

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The Government has quietly introduced a raft of changes to its flagship workers' rights legislation that will strengthen unions' rights to organise staff and to clamp down on rogue employers.

The latest changes, which are now before the House of Lords, have seen Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds expand trade unions' new access rights to go into workplaces, and slash Conservative Government's red tape on strike ballots.

Dozens of Government amendments were tabled and passed ahead of the bill's report stage earlier this month. But there has been little analysis of what they mean.

The new changes to the Employment Rights Bill include an overhaul to rules on how trade unions can become officially 'recognised' by employers to bargain over pay and conditions, making it easier for unions to win official status in the workplace.

The Government has also removed the requirement for unions to hold a ballot every ten years to maintain their 'political funds'. Currently, unions which want to spend money on party political activities - like campaigning for the Labour Party - must set up a separate political fund which members have to vote to maintain every ten years.

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That vote will now be scrapped, and replaced with a reminder every ten years that members can opt out of that fund if they wish. It seems to be an attempt to balance individual choice over union campaigning while reducing administrative burdens that are understood to cost unions millions.

Asked if No 10 was proud of the legislation, the PM's spokesman said: "Yes, it's the biggest upgrade in workers rights in a generation. It will deliver higher productivity, higher growth, and is an important part of the Government's agenda to deliver higher living standards across the country."

Ministers also plan to removed minimum turnout thresholds for industrial action ballots, though this now appears to be coming in future legislation. A TUC source said they were pushing for the Government to push ahead with repealing minimum turnouts as soon as possible after this bill receives Royal Assent.

The Conservatives' 2016 Trade Union Act meant that workers in 'important public services' - including health and education - were only able to strike if 40% of those who were entitled to vote in the ballot answered "Yes" to industrial action, effectively meaning all non-voters were treated as 'No' voters. The same principle, of course, does not apply to the MPs who introduced it.

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The Government will repeal the Minimum Service Levels Act passed by the last Government, which (if used) would have required workers - even those who had voted to strike - to turn up to work in the event of strikes in 'essential' public services, which included health, education and transport.

Another amendment removed the obligation for unions to provide employers with detailed breakdowns of which categories of employees will participate in strikes.

At the same time, the notice period for industrial action will rise from seven to...

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

Who would want to be in Rachel Reeves' shoes, attempting to run a complex, fragile, fast-moving economy in a world of trigger-happy financial markets, climate change, Donald Trump and geopolitical unknowns lurking around every corner? But she took the job and on Wednesday will set out what she plans to do with it in her Spring Statement.

While Reeves should be commended for her fortitude, sadly, there is much that we can be critical of, such as the wild swings from downbeat pessimism over the summer to the pumped up optimism of the winter and 'growth, growth growth'. But there is one fundamental aspect of Labour's relationship to the economy that stretches back decades, that successive Labour Chancellors have got wrong, and that is the fundamental nature of the way capitalism now operates.

We've heard much over the last few weeks in the welfare debate about Labour being called Labour - that's who and what the party is apparently for. But surely the definition of a party as being for 'labour' implies at least some critical relationship with 'capital'. The Labour Party's connection to capital has always been ambiguous, for a vehicle that contains social democrats, socialists, social liberals and pragmatists and careerists of many stripes it could be no other. Some in Labour's ranks are anti-capitalist, and some very pro. But it is the absence of at least a critique of capitalism that now holds the party and the country back.

'No-One Voted for These Cruel Cuts - We Need a Wealth Tax Instead'

Keir Starmer must change course from this performative cruelty towards the sick and disabled, argues Neal Lawson

Neal Lawson

Of course, legislation like the New Deal for Workers bill re-balances the capital/labour scorecard somewhat, just as the minimum wage has. But as Stuart Hall acutely observed in 2003, Labour practises what he termed a 'double shuffle' when it comes to its relationship with capitalism, whereby it simultaneously reinforces neo-liberalism while appeasing some of its social democratic base. So, it cuts corporation tax, commercialises much of the public sector, goes heavy on so called 'skivers and shirkers', while introducing initiatives such as Sure Start. It can then be defended as 'not all bad'.

What is in effect a supportive and subservient relationship to capital goes back to Tony Crosland's important revisionist text The Future of Socialism written in 1957. In it Crosland makes the argument that the new job of social democratic governments was to more fairly and effectively share the proceeds of economic growth. But back then, it was assumed, capitalism had been tamed, not least because labour in the form of unions were still powerful and much of the economy was in the public realm and could be directed for social benefit. In the intervening decades, in the context of a globalised and financialized economy, neo-liberalism has privatised these public assets and smashed the power of the unions. It is society that has now been tamed.

From the 1970s onwards, Labour chancellors have felt they have no option but to ride the capitalist tiger by appeasing the markets. It inevitably ends up with the politics of deregulation, austerity and economic crisis, as capitalism freed from democratic oversight maximises the potential for profit until it crashes. Labour gets the blame and finds itself in political exile only until brief periods in which enough swing voters tire of the Tories and will vote Labour for a change - but only when nothing of significance happens to the economy.

Now, we may dream of some socialist nirvana in which the means of production are fully soc...