After Labour’s poor election results on 1 May and the general over-excitement caused by Reform's "success", Starmer promised to "rethink" some of his anti-working class policies.  Especially since Farage, the billionaire, revamped his "worker" image and promised to restore pensioners' winter fuel allowance and scrap the 2-child benefit cap.

    In fact Starmer’s winter fuel allowance cut left 10.3m pensioners worse off - including 2.5m who were already under the "Minimum Standard of Living" and struggling to make ends meet.  To have announced this as one of Labour's first austerity measures was always going to cause uproar - but Reeves and Starmer thought they could get away with it.

    They didn’t expect Farage to capitalise on their cuts, however!  Now even Tory leader Kemi Badenoch says “her party” would never have touched this allowance.  But Starmer has so far not provided any clues as to who might be eligible, if he indeed makes a U-turn over it.  As for when, this might be announced only in the next budget in October - too late for this winter!

    We are now also told that scrapping the 2-child benefit cap, is "on the table".  But which table that might be, nobody in Starmer's Cabinet seems to know!  And in the meantime, Farage is going all-out to try and steal Labour's thunder (if there is any working class thunder left in the Labour cupboard), while Starmer is doing an excellent impression of Enoch Powell.

    He is announcing yet more measures against immigrants - which will prevent overseas workers from getting visas to work in social care, for instance, when there is no other way to cover these jobs!  And he is literally promoting the drowning of asylum seekers by not providing safe entry routes - which is the only way to "stop the boats".  One could well ask "who needs a Nigel?"

    In the meantime, the cost of living crisis is alive and kicking.  The RPI rate for April hit 4.5% - the highest in nearly 2 years!  But teachers and NHS doctors have been offered just 4% on pay, while other NHS staff are offered only 3.6%.  When they’d need a 30% pay rise, just to make up for the cut in real pay since 2015!

    Today, doctors are balloting for strike, and teachers will soon follow.  The bosses and their parliamentary mouthpieces are using every trick in the book to turn the screw even tighter on the working class.  Workers across sectors, both public and private, would do well to prepare for a "summer of discontent"!

It’s surely been impossible not to notice - and be utterly shocked and disgusted - at the total contradiction between western leaders’ across-the-board condemnation of Putin’s war on Ukraine, their arming of Zelensky against his invading army, and their support for the invading army of Netanyahu - who they also helped to arm - against a weak and poverty-stricken Gazan population.  That is, up to now...

    Because today, when it’s too late, when more than 61,700 mainly civilians have been killed (including those lost under the rubble of bombed buildings) and when thousands of kids have had their limbs amputated due to “life-changing” injuries, and when famine threatens, yes today, suddenly they decide a few words of “caution” towards the Israeli terror state are in order!

    So they write a letter.  They threaten to stop sending weapons.  They now say Netanyahu and his self-proclaimed “fascist” war cabinet have gone a bit too far: they are preventing humanitarian aid reaching the population...

    But Netanyahu was ready for them; first to claim that no, he and his government are feeding the starving Palestinians of Gaza and what’s more it is these Western politicians’ fault - not his - that Jewish people are now a target for revenge killings  in the name of a “free Palestine”.

    His first attempt to supply “food aid” to Gaza, via a US-funded private organisation ended up in more terror for the Palestinians - several killed by Israeli soldiers and many hurt, when a huge mass of people rushed desperately to get a box of food.

    One might wonder why it is that the victims of this invasion and relentless war are not the ones who are supported by western governments, as is the case in Ukraine - including “even” the “Hamas” authority which has been running the Strip since 2007 and is thus a Palestinian equivalent of Zelensky’s Ukrainian administration.  And why not even, the threat of “boots on (Gaza’s) ground”..?

    Of course it’s not just abject hypocrisy.  The real war being conducted is the war of the rich against the poor - imperialist force against those who must be kept in their place for the maintenance of imperialist order.  Netanyahu and his government, no matter how murderous and corrupt, are agents of this order, just as Zelensky is.  No “morals” are involved.  The best that can come out of this for the workers and the poor of this world is the realisation that these wars can only end when the rule of this imperialist system is ended.  And that they are the only ones who can make that happen.