Systems of control expanding. The Electoral Commission.

The government is proposing to bring the Electoral Commission, the body that regulates elections and party funding, directly under parliamentary control. That's not to say this is currently a body that disputes government overtures, but at least it currently has a level of autonomy. The move comes through the Elections Act framework that is being pushed by senior Conservatives embedded in state structures, with quiet nods from figures in Starmer’s circle who deceitful refer to this “streamlining oversight” as apparently modernisation.

The Commission currently operates semi-independently, with powers to investigate parliamentary parties, enforce spending limits, and issue sanctions.

Under this new plan idea the commissions priorities would be set by government ministers. Essentially the body that polices elections would be controlled by the very parties it supposed to investigate.

Ramifications:
Investigations into ruling party donations or breaches could be delayed, diluted, or shut down entirely on a whim.

Smaller parties and protest movements would face tighter scrutiny as the establishment tightens its grip.

It shifts Britain closer to a managed democracy. We already concede that parliament, and elections, are not vehicles for change, but hard fought reforms that workers fight for to help their current conditions become even more impossible.

Plausibility:
This isn’t simply speculative. Elements of the Elections Act 2022 already introduced a “strategy and policy statement” mechanism giving ministers power to direct the Commission in their preferred direction. What’s floated now is a full capture — a consolidation that watchdogs and constitutional lawyers are calling a breach of democratic norms.

The Electoral Commission was set up in 2000, in an attempt to keep party funding and election rules out of direct government hands. Weak and corrupted though it has often been, it at least held the space for scrutiny. Pulling it into ministerial control shreds even that minimal independence.

It is a blatant lie that this is about fixing inefficiency — it’s about consolidating class rule. When the referee belongs to one team, the game is already rigged. The ruling class doesn’t need to abolish elections, just neuter the bodies that could expose their corruption. Democracy becomes brand management while capital keeps its hold.

The Class Consciousness Project.

From the golden age of football. Before the premier league and the sky money. Before all seater stadiums and concourses with hot dogs, nachos, all manner of different vendors.

These days the football mattered and it was rooted in the local community. You'd be standing next to your school friends and work colleagues. No tickets sold on the internet for hundreds of pounds, pricing our local supporters.
Good times.

Reading FC: A Club Bled Dry

Reading FC, once a stable Championship side, has been pushed to the brink under owner Dai Yongge. Years of mismanagement, mounting debts, and even late wage payments have left the club in freefall. Players and staff have gone unpaid, the training ground was temporarily closed, and the club faces repeated EFL sanctions. Fans now rally under the banner: Sell Before We Dai.

This isn’t just the bad luck some clubs can succumb too. Yongge bought the club in 2017, loaded it with debt, and failed to meet financial fair play requirements. Instead of investment that supporters of clubs like Reading dream of when a new owner takes over, its supporters have suffered from deductions and transfer bans with administration close by.

Reading’s collapse exposes the wider rot in English football: owners treat clubs as private assets to be stripped, while regulators only step in when it’s too late. The supporters who built the identity of the club are left powerless.

These capitalist investers don't understand, or care, that football clubs are not businesses like any other. They are community institutions. Left in the hands of speculators, they can be destroyed overnight.

One of the very worst mistakes made by the old Communist Party in Britain was to propagate the idea that Britain had become merely a tool of the US imperialists and had "lost sovereignty" as a result. This was a mistake that the Soviet leadership was more than prepared to go along with in the mistaken belief that some kind of united front against US imperialism could be forged in Britain. This was a mistake because, for all the Brit ruling class had to make concessions to the US they retained their ability to exploit the neo-colonial world for many decades as part of their alliance with the US. And it is an alliance which was chosen to retain the power of the Brit ruling class, not an occupation. The brit ruling class constantly haggle with and try to influence the US and have been very successful in allying with the most reactionary factions in the US itself.

What the old CPGB ended up doing was effectively pretending that British imperialism no longer existed, this edition to very eccentric and reactionary turns from the British maoists later when they started to claim that Britain was an oppressed nation, this led aome in the direction of fascism.

The consistent failure though in Britain by most "marxists" is their blindness to the nature of British imperialism and this remains the case to this day.

"If Jerusalem is not free...the world is captive"

One of several banners being flown by Galatasaray in Istanbul tonight. The Turkish club speaking out against the genocide in Palestine.

Anfield 1967.

An aid flotilla in international waters, carrying food and medicine for the suffering people of Gaza, was seized by Israeli forces. The crew have been arrested, including Greta Thunberg and Nelson Mandela's grandson Mandla, and Israel has said they will be deported back to Europe. Greta was arrested earlier this year in another flotilla attempting to deliver aid.

Flotillas carrying activists have tried this before with deadly repercussions. The Mavi Marmara in 2010 saw activists gunned down by Israeli commandos.

Fortunately this time no one was killed. Israel can't to afford murder these activists in cold blood due to the surge in anti-israel sentiments around the world and this time the world is watching.

87 years ago, on the night of September 29 to 30, 1938, in Munich, the heads of government of Great Britain (N. Chamberlain), France (E. Daladier), fascist Germany (A. Hitler), and fascist Italy (B. Mussolini), with behind-the-scenes support from the USA, signed an agreement on the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and the transfer of the Sudetenland to Germany (the "Munich Agreement").

Also, on September 30, 1938, a declaration of mutual non-aggression was signed between Great Britain and Germany; a similar declaration was signed later, on December 6, between Germany and France.

The key elements in the immediate preparation of the Munich Agreement included: the demands put forward by the fascist Sudeten German party Henlein under Hitler's instructions, which essentially implied Czechoslovakia's renunciation of sovereignty over the Sudetenland (April 24); maneuvers by Anglo-French diplomacy aimed at justifying the forthcoming deal with the aggressor to public opinion and persuading Czechoslovakia to capitulate (the Rensimen mission); the Sudeten fascists' rebellion on September 13, suppressed by Czechoslovak armed forces; the Berchtesgaden meeting, during which Chamberlain basically agreed to Hitler's demand to transfer the border Czechoslovak territories to Germany (September 15); the Anglo-French ultimatum demanding the transfer of part of Czechoslovak territory to Germany (September 18), accepted on September 21 by Czechoslovak President E. Benes; Chamberlain's meeting with Hitler in Bad Godesberg to discuss new, even harsher demands from the German government on Czechoslovakia (September 22).

The Munich Agreement provided for the transfer of the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia to Germany with all facilities and fortifications, factories, plants, raw material stocks, communication routes, etc. (on October 1, 1938, the German Wehrmacht invaded Czechoslovakia and occupied the Sudetenland), satisfaction of Poland's territorial claims at Czechoslovakia's expense (on October 2, the Teschen region was occupied by Poland) and Hungary's (on November 2, 1938, Hungary received the southern districts of Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus' (modern Zakarpattia region of Ukraine) with the cities of Uzhhorod, Mukachevo, and Berehove), and a "guarantee" by the agreement participants of the new borders of Czechoslovakia against unprovoked aggression (the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 revealed the false nature of these "guarantees").

The agreement signed in Munich became one of the most striking manifestations of the "appeasement" policy pursued on the eve of World War II by the governments of Great Britain and France, aiming to reach a pact with fascist Germany, divert fascist aggression away from Great Britain and France at the expense of Central and Southeastern European countries, and direct it eastward, against the Soviet Union.

The Munich Agreement became an important milestone in the unleashing of World War II.

This is a translation of a post that originally appeared on the Kommunisti Mir channel

When the United States, Israel or their proxies, bomb civilians, it’s always called “unfortunate but necessary.”
When any nation outside the imperial orbit dares to defend itself or act independently, it’s immediately branded a “war crime.”

This is the hypocrisy of imperialism, the so-called “rules-based international order” only applies when it serves Western interests.
The same governments that have flattened countries from Iraq to Libya, armed apartheid regimes, and sanctioned entire populations to death suddenly discover “international law” when China, Russia or Palestine are mentioned.

There are no “good bombs” or “humanitarian invasions.”
There’s only power, profit, and propaganda — and the working class of every nation pays the price for it.

The Class Consciousness Project.

Trigger-happy police on our streets is one more repressive move by the state we can expect to see being justified by the ‘threat of islamic terrorism’ – a threat that the British imperialists themselves have created, and now use as a pretext for cracking down on all domestic dissent.

https://thecommunists.org/2025/10/05/news/manchester-synagogue-attack-serves-division/

In the North of Liverpool, the land that the council forgot, more buildings are falling into disrepair and crumbling in plain sight.
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/liverpool-shop-front-collapses-heavy-32611175#ICID=Android_EchoNewsApp_AppShare

This isn't in the 1800s, or even the 1980s — this is 2025. Liverpool is celebrated as a flourishing city: a magnet for tourists, music lovers, football fans, shoppers, night-outers. Millions of pounds pour into the city every day, yet where does it go? Certainly not into the maintenance of working-class neighbourhoods or the homes of native workers.

We’ve written about this before. Houses in Anfield and Walton collapsing are nothing new and abandoned, or desolate streets are seen all over the city the so-called “regeneration” schemes that never seem to regenerate anything for those who live here. This hasn’t just started. It’s been happening for years, while the same councillors make the same empty promises and the same developers cash in.

Just yards from a stadium where millionaire players train and perform, whole houses are decaying. Walls crack, roofs fall in, windows shatter — silent reminders of how wealth and neglect can live side by side.

Liverpool City Council has been under a long shadow of corruption investigations. Accusations of bribery, misconduct in public office, and dodgy contract awards have long been a constant occurrence under Liverpool Labour.

In March 2025, the Crown Prosecution Service authorised charges against 12 people tied to alleged wrongdoing in Liverpool’s local government. Among them is Joe Anderson, former mayor (not to be confused with current Mayor Jo Anderson), now charged with bribery, misconduct and conspiracy, alongside ex-deputy leader Dodgy Derek Hatton and several council officials and developers implicated in contract scandals. Corruption was so rife that the previous Tory government had to send in their own commissioner and an investigation by the well known local council administrator Max Caller (see Max Caller Report)

Back in 2021, investigators warned Liverpool may have “squandered up to £100 million of public money” through corrupt deals and mismanagement.

And yet, as Everton’s new £760 million stadium rises proudly over Bramley-Moore Dock, backed by government loans and council support, while the streets surrounding the previous Everton Stadium, Goodison Park, in North Liverpool are collapsing. That’s the reality of the Merseyside “renaissance”: luxury developments for investors, grand projects for developers, and nothing but empty promises for the working class who’ve lived here all their lives.

The brutal truth is that the council tax rises constantly, but rotting streets and collapsing houses remain unchanged.

Wealth gushes into corporate projects and stadium spectacles, but not into the homes of ordinary people.

Politicians calling for your vote are embroiled in corruption probes, as millions slip through cracks you don’t even see.

This is the success story capitalism wants you to applaud: massive profiteering, gleaming landmarks, and the working class left to live on the margins, or in the rubble.

Liverpool’s working class built this city. Now they have to watch it fall down around them.