Category: Articles

It’s climate chaos with the Tories or a green new deal with Labour, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE.

This week saw new calls from the United Nations for countries to take urgent action to cut emissions to tackle the growing global climate emergency.

The UN is calling for global emission cuts of over 7 per cent a year, but last year the Britain’s carbon emissions fell by a lowly 2 per cent.

Furthermore, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said we need to cut global emissions in half by 2030 to have a chance of keeping global heating within safe limits — that means acting now and acting in an ambitious and decisive manner.
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We must build an international movement in solidarity with those resisting the Latin America’s latest right-wing outrage, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE.

LAST Sunday, a right-wing coup ousted President Evo Morales amid a wave of violence and abuse directed against indigenous people across the country, particularly supporters of Morales’s Movement for Socialism (MAS) party.

Whilst some in the media have ridiculously claimed this is not a coup, what other word in the English language can describe a situation when army generals appear on TV demanding the resignation of an elected head of state while their allies detain and torture government officials?
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The party’s commitment to make all new homes zero-carbon within three years is both radical and needed, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE.

LAST week, Labour announced ground-breaking plans to make all new homes zero-carbon within three years.

This could save people living in new-builds £200 a year in energy bills, and is just one of a series of progressive and far-reaching announcements from Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour during this election campaign that will both tackle the climate emergency and improve people’s living standards.
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First published in Labour Briefing.

Firstly, can I say how great it is to be writing in this issue of ‘Labour Briefing’ and to be adding my thoughts to the excellent recent articles on Venezuela, Bolivia and Brazil that have looked at why we on the Left must be clear that it is up to the people of Latin America to determine their own future, not Donald Trump.

I have been active in solidarity with the left in Latin America for decades, from opposing the coup in Chile in 1973, to supporting the Nicaraguan revolution in 1979, to my agreement with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela when I was Mayor of London, to my continued activity today.
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Only Labour has a plan to tackle the climate emergency — we need a Corbyn-led government for both people and planet, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE.

THIS week Labour published a report by a group of independent energy industry experts, academics and others.

The result is an ambitious set of 30 recommendations that crucially set out the next immediate and urgent steps that Britain needs to take to be on track to decarbonise.
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We must all come together in solidarity against Trump’s interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE.

I’m pleased to be speaking at the upcoming annual Latin America Conference. This is a highlight of the progressive calendar here in Britain, and a vital event to support socialist parties, workers, trade unions and progressive movements in Latin America who are standing up to both neoliberalism and hostility from the Trump administration, and standing together for a better world.
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Let’s concentrate on the difference a Labour government would make and the high stakes at the coming election.

AS EVENTS over the past few weeks and days twist and turn, a general election in the very near future looks increasingly likely and the hope of getting Boris Johnson out by Christmas grows.

Jeremy Corbyn has been clear on the need to first ensure that Johnson can’t crash us out with no deal, and once that is secured, a general election must be fought and won.
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Venezuelans will suffer more under the impact of a fully-fledged US blockade, writes Ken Livingstone.

President Trump has recently imposed sweeping new sanctions against Venezuela in his bid to oust the elected government of President Maduro. The embargo measures now constitute a fully-fledged economic blockade of the type employed against Cuba since the early 1960s.

The new measures enacted by an Executive Order on August 5th totally block all Venezuelan assets in the US and prohibit all transactions with Venezuelan state agencies.
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The Conservative government is blighting a whole generation of children, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE.

ONE of the most depressing things about our so-called “mainstream media” is how little they cover the devastating impact of Tory austerity on our communities and people from all across Britain.

One such thing that deserves much more attention is how the Tories are failing a whole generation of children, including through rising homelessness and poverty. This was shown by a recent report from the Children’s Commissioner for England which estimated that there could be more than 210,000 children without a permanent home in England, with thousands living in dangerous converted shipping containers.
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One of Trump’s main allies in South and Central America is in big trouble, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE.

A recent wave of protests against the Honduran government of Juan Orlando Hernandez has continued the campaign calling for his immediate resignation and arrest on charges of corruption and sanctioning violent repression and murder of a range of Honduran citizens such as environmental activists, journalists and trade unionists.

These latest acts of resistance involve a range of groups and social movements, including the Defence of Health and Public Education campaign.
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