Category: Articles

Despite what some Tories say a proper funding of healthcare is possible. Germany, for example, spends £23 billion more than Britain on its health service every year. Only a Labour government can rescue the NHS, argues KEN LIVINGSTONE.

THERESA MAY’S boast that the NHS was the best prepared it’s ever been was totally discredited by this week’s NHS England stats which revealed the true and shocking scale of the NHS winter crisis, confirming the worst fears of patients and staff.
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Any visit to Britain, early next year, by the US president will be opposed by the majority of Britons, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE.

REPORTS have said in recent weeks that President Donald Trump is likely to visit Britain early next year and this seems to have been confirmed by comments from the US ambassador in London.

Any such visit is likely to see widespread opposition to Trump’s divisive and reactionary agenda and protests are already being planned.
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The UK Poverty 2017 report highlights that overall 14 million people live in poverty in Britain — over 20 per cent of the population. This spiralling poverty and ever-increasing use of foodbanks show just how out of touch the Tories have become, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE.

Alongside even the government’s own social mobility commission resigning over the Tories’ failure to act, two different pieces of news illustrated starkly how cuts have consequences and that the longer the Tories’ austerity project goes on the clearer and more widespread these become.
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Tory failure to address the most pressing needs of the economy and society makes them unfit for office, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE.

BEHIND the bad jokes, gimmicks and rather meagre “giveaways” in this week’s Budget, the main story was a substantial downgrading of growth forecasts in a situation where economic growth is already currently the lowest it has been since the Tories came into office and the slowest of the major economies in the G7.
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Latin America is under threat from an increasingly aggressive Trump administration, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE.

FOR decades now, the US has sought to intervene and bring down progressive governments — or indeed just governments that seek to assert their national sovereignty — in Latin America, using a range of methods, from “soft coups” to military coups, from sanctions to blockades, and from international isolation to direct military action.

Any hopes that the US might become less interventionist under Donald Trump have been quickly dashed by his displays of belligerence in all directions and his apparent willingness to use military action to settle scores, as already represented by bombastic language towards Mexico when pressing ahead with his proposal to build a wall on the border, and his recent refusal to rule out military options when it comes to Venezuela.
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Labour will slash energy, water and post bills through public ownership, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE.

THIS week, Labour outlined how through public ownership — and a commitment to putting people rather than rip-off private profits first — it will slash energy, water and post bills.

This could not be more needed, as the privatisation of key public utilities has seen household bills hiked up to pay for dividend and interest payments while the quality of service has often deteriorated.
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Recent economic reports were a damning indictment of seven years of Tory austerity, writes Ken Livingstone.

Last week’s Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecast evaluation report says it will have to “significantly” lower its estimates for Britain’s productivity, blowing a large hole in Tory plans for the public finances ahead of the government’s November budget.

In particular, the revised figures point to the average rate of productivity growth of 0.2 per cent over the past five years as a more accurate guide for 2017 than the previous forecast of 1.6 per cent.
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Conference this week showed a rejuvenated party outlining an alternative that can both win for Labour and transform Britain, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE.

THIS week’s Labour Conference was the best attended, most exciting and most participatory for years. For this alone Jeremy Corbyn and his leadership team deserve great credit.

The highlight of the week for me was Corbyn’s speech. He powerfully explained that neoliberalism and the Tories’ “degraded regime has a tragic monument — the chilling wreckage of Grenfell Tower.
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The dramatic rise in homelessness under the Tories is a national scandal, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE.

ACCORDING to the government’s spending watchdog — the National Audit Office (NAO) — homelessness is up by a staggering 134 per cent since the Tories gained power in 2010.

The figures also show that rough sleeping more than doubled since 2010.

The number of households in temporary accommodation rose by 60 per cent, now affecting 73 per cent more youngsters than in March 2011.
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Tory-DUP coalition of chaos is presiding over the slowest-growing economy in the G7, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE.

AS PARLIAMENT returns this week, more evidence has piled up over the summer recess that the Tory-DUP coalition of chaos is failing Britain’s economy with its commitment to never-ending austerity.

Specifically, Office for National Statistics figures released last week show that household spending growth has slowed to its weakest pace for two-and-a-half years, which is yet another reflection of seven years of Tory economic failure, adding to the growing pile of evidence that their ideologically driven austerity is bad for Britain’s economy and society.
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