On Tuesday, an anonymous source leaked the Labour Party’s draft manifesto for the upcoming general election - without doubt the boldest and most left-wing manifesto that Labour has stood on in decades. Pledges cover everything from the renationalisation of Royal Mail, to restoring trade union rights and building 100,000 council houses a year.

“Marx is back in fashion.” So says the London Evening Standard (editor: George Osborne!) as the “sexy socialists” push Karl Marx and Das Kapital back into the limelight.

The annual analysis of the wealth of the richest 1,000 people in Britain by the Sunday Times has been completed once again. The results are shocking, but unsurprising.

Their combined wealth has now reached £658 billion (a rise of 14% since the review last year), which makes it greater than the combined wealth of the poorest 40% of Britons.

In a confident anti-establishment speech in Whitechapel on April 29, Corbyn launched the Labour Party’s slogan for the upcoming general election. In spite of (or perhaps because of) another week of more-or-less open sabotage by current and former Labour Party grandees, the Labour Party election campaign has generated a lot of enthusiasm. An estimated 200,000 activists participated in some form or another in the Labour Party campaign this last weekend.

With the triggering of Article 50 and an upcoming general election to be fought primarily over the issue of Brexit, there has been much debate about Labour’s position on this key question and how it and the wider labour movement should respond to the Tories’ Brexit plan.

Although initially written in December last year (and therefore already overtaken in places by new events and developments, most notably the announcement of the general election), this document written by Socialist Appeal provides an analysis of the main processes affecting British politics and society, as well as outlining the fundamental contradictions facing the ruling class and leaders of the labour movement. It is clear that the current political period in Britain is incredibly intense, and that a radical analysis and perspective is needed more than ever before.