Since taking power, Starmer has pursued a policy agenda that’s barely distinguishable from that of his Tory predecessors. He’s scrapped almost every genuinely progressive idea the Labour Party had to offer, hastened the creeping privatization of the National Health Service, waged a campaign of financial austerity against poor and sick people, endorsed anti-trans bigotry, authorized inhumane “raids” against immigrants, pursued a variety of “tough-on-crime” crackdowns, and cozied up to right-wing media baron Rupert Murdoch, all while purging principled leftists from the Labour bench and installing former Tories. Words are cheap, but actions reveal a politician’s true character. With every passing day, Starmer has proven that the Conservatives’ rule over Britain never really ended at all. Because in every way that matters, Keir Starmer is a Tory himself.

[...]

In the European edition of Politico, we can find a comprehensive list of all the Labour policies that Starmer once claimed to support, but later walked back or completely abandoned. Abolishing tuition fees at British universities? Gone. Nationalizing the “Big Six” energy companies? Gone. Offering universal childcare to all British children? Gone. Increasing taxes on the rich? Never heard of it. Abolishing the absurd, archaic institution of the House of Lords? Indefinitely on hold. Rent control? Not a chance. And so on, and so on. In place of these ambitious goals, Starmer started speaking fluent Conservative, saying that his priority was “growth, growth, growth” and citing self-imposed “fiscal rules” for why each new program couldn’t be afforded. At one point, he even cited Margaret Thatcher as a figure he admired, saying she had “dragg[ed] Britain out of its stupor by setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism.”

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/keir-starmer-is-a-disgrace-to-the-british-labour-party

Implementing the EU's Critical Raw
Materials Act - EU parliament briefing

2024 IMF Annual Meetings: main
developments and outcomes

Key findings:
- inflation to return to target in 2025 in Europe
- The euro area growth projections were revised slightly down compared to April’s edition, to 0.8% in 2024 and 1.2% in 2025. Reasons for Europe’s underwhelming growth are the slow labour force growth resulting from acceleration of aging population, low investment rate relative to capital stock due to uncertainties about the effects of global fragmentation and trade policies, and low productivity growth.
- China is the main global creditor

I find it hilarious how the IMF plan is to deregulate, reduce barriers to trade and lower public debt on one side, while on the other increase social protections and reduce private debt. How the fuck are governments supposed to increase social protections while reducing public debt (that almost always is done by cutting social protections) while at the same time maintaining monetarist policies (forget MMT!)? Who knows

Let's check our vibrant multiethnic democracy that Zionists paint Israel as and uh! Oh! Shocking! Baffled! Befuddled! Astonished! Bewildered! Other synonyms!

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2022-06-06/ty-article/60-percent-of-israeli-jews-favor-segregation-from-arabs-survey-finds/00000181-351b-dee8-aba7-3d9fdfdf0000

"If there is one lesson to be taken from the past dismal year, it’s this: the liberal Zionist interpretation of the conflict has no predictive value, no analytical weight, and no moral rigor. It is a failed dream of the previous century, and it is unlikely to survive this one."

https://thebaffler.com/latest/the-failure-of-liberal-zionism-klion

As the Moroccan Jewish Marxist Abraham Serfaty analysed decades ago in his prison writings on Palestinian liberation, there is a ‘fascist logic’ at the heart of the Zionist settler-colonial project of dispossession, domination and displacement. While it may be disavowed by liberals, unless its core mechanisms are dismantled for good, it cannot but re-emerge, virulently, at every crisis. As testified by its broadsides against the hypocrisy of those who claim that they want a two-state solution while never intending to bring it about, the governing Israeli far-Right is in many ways saying the quiet part very loudly. At a time when the occupation and its brutalisation of Palestinians has been normalised and treated to all intents and purposes as interminable, the fascistic settler and religious right has come to affirm and celebrate the structuring violence and dehumanisation that marks Israel as a settler-colonial project – one which liberals have thought to mitigate or minimise, but never truly to challenge.

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/the-war-on-gaza-and-israel-s-fascism-debate