Keir Starmer is doubling down in the wake of Labour’s dismal election results, accelerating the shift to the right. If we want a real ‘change of direction’, we need an urgent change of leadership. Starmer out! Fight for socialism!

The results of yesterday’s elections are a catastrophe for Labour. The blame for this lies entirely with Starmer and the right wing. We need a new leadership. No confidence in Starmer! Fight the Tories with socialist policies!

The left has suffered a harsh defeat in Madrid. If anyone was singled out these past years by the reaction as public enemy number one of the regime, it was Pablo Iglesias. He has resigned all of the political posts that he held under this pressure. The right will be celebrating in style and its arrogance will be augmented. The rank–and–file of the left must learn the lessons from all this. As the philosopher Spinoza said, ours is not to laugh nor to cry, but to understand.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is in hot water over alleged remarks that he would rather see ‘bodies pile high’ than bring in lockdowns. Real or fabricated, it is clear that the Tories’ priority is profits over lives. Mobilise against this rotten government!

Cracks are opening up in the foundations of Putin's regime, which is forced to rest on increasingly brutal and arbitrary repression. With the regime entering into a period of crisis, and broad masses of the Russian population openly questioning it, the question arises: how will the Communist Party of the Russian Federation respond?

Throughout March, a mass struggle in Greece (led by the youth) has been waged against police violence and the reactionary, authoritarian New Democracy (ND) government. The main left organisations have scandalously distanced themselves from and refused to join forces in support of this militant movement. Nevertheless, the masses have emerged from a period of paralysis willing to fight. The movement against police repression has temporarily subsided for now, due to the emergency conditions imposed by the present spike of the pandemic. But what is clear is that a new chapter of the Greek class struggle has begun. Note: this article was initially drafted in March.

An escalation of tension in the Donbas region raised the spectre of open conflict, which would plunge people on both sides into a nightmare of bloodshed once more. Although troops have now withdrawn from the border, why did this scare take place? And who stands to benefit from continued strife in the region?

The results of the recent Greenlandic election reflect a rejection of the ruthless exploitation of Greenland’s natural resources by multinational corporations. A big drop in turnout, however, also reveals an underlying radicalisation and dissatisfaction with the whole system, the political elite, and Danish colonialism.

The leader of left-wing party Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, (who recently resigned as vice president in the Spanish coalition government to stand as a candidate for the Madrid Regional Assembly) received a letter yesterday containing a death threat against him and his family and four bullets. The Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska and the Director of the Civil Guard received similar envelopes with threats and bullets. One of them is signed: "Civil Guard. National Police." These threats should be taken seriously. 

The apparent social peace in Portugal in recent years – without major uprisings or noteworthy social turmoil – hides a much more complex and bitter reality beneath its fragile surface. Whilst the mainstream media, nationally and internationally, hailed the economic recovery after Portugal’s debt crisis as a new dawn, the scars left in society by a decade of austerity, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, have created the potential for future revolutionary developments.

For a long time, the CDU/CSU was considered the most stable conservative party in Europe. But the battle now raging in public for candidacy for the chancellorship between Armin Laschet (CDU) and Markus Söder (CSU) has shown that this central pillar of German capitalism is riven with deep cracks. Laschet has prevailed, but stability is gone.

Plans for an exclusive European Super League have been defeated thanks to mass protests by football fans across England. This is a major victory for supporters. But the fight to stop the profiteering and plunder of ‘the people’s game’ continues.

The scandalous announcement by football’s top clubs of a new elite breakaway ‘European Super League’ is the logical conclusion of profit penetrating the world of sport. To save the ‘beautiful game’, we must kick capitalism out of football.

The German federal constitutional court has ruled the rent cap in Berlin as unconstitutional, bringing to an end the Berlin rent cap experiment. This means that Berlin tenants will have to dig deeper into their pockets to be able to afford a roof over their heads. The German left-wing party DIE LINKE and the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) with its eight member unions now have to go on the offensive!

Over the weekend of 9-11 April 2021, Der Funke, the German section of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), held its national congress. We intently discussed the perspectives for the class struggle, and the tasks facing our revolutionary organisation. Although circumstances meant the congress had to take place online, the mood was militant and enthusiastic.