Spartacus Blog
The General Election Campaign: The Tyranny of the Centre
On The first General Election that I actively took part in was in 1964. I had joined the Young Socialists the previous year. I was living on the Harold Hill council estate and my MP was Ron Ledger. He had been the Labour Party MP since 1955 and it has been claimed that he had made one of the most moving maiden speeches ever heard in the House of Commons.
"The story starts in 1923. In that year, a certain family was already faced with a social problem, because the father of the family decided he could no longer stay at home. The mother was pregnant and was left the responsibility of caring for three children. If she did not go to work, her fourth child would have to be born in the workhouse. The three children were therefore placed in an institution, known to us all as Dr Barnardo's Home. Thirteen years later one of the three children went out into the world to fight the normal battles and, indeed, is today a Member of this House. But I have not the slightest idea where my brother, my sister, my mother, my father or any other relative might be." (1)
At first Ron Ledger was considered a good Member of Parliament. According to his colleague, Tam Dalyell: "He had time for everybody and was one of the first MPs when it was not fashionable to do so to make a point of spending hours - when no election was on - meeting people in shopping centres and announcing his presence over a loudspeaker." (2)
However, by 1963, Ron Ledger was an unpopular MP with party activists. He rarely visited the town or the House of Commons and was more interested in running the Pier Hotel on the Isle of Wight. Attempts were made to deselect him in 1964 but as with Sir Keir Starmer's Labour Party, there was little democracy involved in selecting parliamentary candidates, and we had a visit from someone working at Party Headquarters threatening us with expulsion. We therefore reluctantly campaigned for him and relying heavily on the support he received from the Harold Hill council estate, he had an easy victory.
1964 General Election
During the campaign I had the pleasure of watching Harold Wilson give a magnificent speech in a large hall in Hornchurch. There was a large number of people who could not get into the hall and so they set up loudspeakers so the people outside could hear Wilson deal successfully with several hostile hecklers. It is hard to believe that the current political leaders would be willing to encounter the public in this way.
One of the things I did notice was that most of the newspapers were extremely hostile to Harold Wilson in 1964. That is not surprising as newspapers are usually owned by very rich men who do not like the idea of redistributing wealth. The Tory press have always caused problems for Labour leaders. Tony Blair is the one exception, and he was able to do a deal with Rubert Murdoch. This came at a cost. As Lance Price, Director of Communications for the Labour Party, pointed out "at times when I worked at Downing Street he (Murdoch) seemed like the 24th member of the cabinet…. No big decision could ever be made inside No 10 without taking account of the likely reaction of three men - Gordon Brown, John Prescott and Rupert Murdoch. On all the really big decisions, anybody else could safely be ignored." (3)
Lance Price argued: "The close relationship between Tony Blair, New Labour and Rupert Murdoch was a double-edged sword. It won the government invaluable support from the News International stable, but at a high price. The Prime Minister's meetings with Mr Murdoch were often treated like state secrets. His voice was rarely heard... but his presence was always felt." (4)
The Media and Sir Keir Starmer
In every election that followed Tony Blair's retirement, the Labour leader has faced an extremely hostile press. However, this election is very different. Even the BBC, who played a major role in the destruction of Jeremy Corbyn, is giving Starmer an easy time and is treated with the respect only usually given to the Prime Minister. Conservative supporting newspapers have been suggesting that the BBC are keen for a Labour victory in the belief they will maintain the current funding model. (5)
Aaron Bastani has pointed out: "Keir Starmer is being treated with kid gloves. As evidenced during his Question Time appearance earlier this week, a potential prime minister who may receive the most substantial mandate in modern history isn't being asked what he will do with it." (6)
![Harold Wilson, Keir Hardie, Keir Starmer, Tony Blair, Clement Attlee](00000000starmerPH1.jpg)
Taking the lead from Rishi Sunak the right-wing media have accused Keir Starmer of using a bland Labour Party manifesto to gain office and then when he has a "supermajority" he will impose a socialist state on the UK public. Peter Hitchens, writing in The Daily Mail, suggests that Keir Starmer is more dangerous than Jeremy Corbyn: "Many people in media and politics spent years denouncing Jeremy Corbyn, a steam-powered and rather dim old buffer whose one virtue was that he appeared to be exactly what he was. Labour's real Left must have hugely enjoyed the attacks on Mr Corbyn, as they drew attention away from their far slicker, well-camouflaged operations."
Hitchens points out that in his youth Starmer was involved in the left-wing magazine Socialist Alternatives and was a member of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers. "But who, these days, would even know about this? The anti-Corbyn wars have diverted the attention of those who might have paid some heed. The British public have been given little reason to doubt the official story that Sir Keir is a respectable 'moderate' who will do nothing radical. The Tory Party think they can risk letting him into Downing Street. Well, you just wait." (7)
An early decision was taken by Rishi Sunak that the main attack line should be that Starmer was a socialist in disguise and that once in power he would increase the tax burden on families. In the first TV debate Sunak claimed that Labour would raise taxes by £2,000 per working household. The following day he was criticised by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) for not saying that this was a sum totalled over four years. The Treasury's top civil servant also complained that Sunak had presented the figure as if it had been produced by impartial civil servants. (8)
The Funding of Starmer's Labour Party
Although it was very easy to counter this claim Sunak continued with this line of attack despite the polls showing that it was ineffective. It is true that Starmer might be lying about his tax plans. However, that is pure speculation. What we do know is that Starmer has lied in the past. At his campaign launch in Manchester to become leader, Starmer said: "We are not going to trash the last Labour government… nor are we going to trash the last four years under Jeremy Corbyn". (9)
The most notable occasion of his willingness to tell was when he made his ten socialist pledges during his campaign to become the leader of the Labour Party. In fact, without doing this his leadership campaign would have failed as the majority of party members at the time had been supporters of Jeremy Corbyn. Soon after he was elected, Starmer began ditching his pledges. Sunak could have argued that a political leader who lies to his party members would be just as likely to lie the electorate in the General Election. (10)
Sunak could also have pointed out the reasons why Starmer broke his ten pledges. After his election as leader Starmer published details of the people who funded his campaign. Trevor Chinn, a private-equity broker and Martin Taylor, a hedge-fund manager, gave him a combined £145,000. Both men had been long-time campaigners against increasing taxes for the wealthy. Do you think they would have given him this money if they really believed that Starmer would really "increase tax on the top 5% of earners". (11)
Sunak could then have gone on about the current funding of the Labour Party. In the past the Conservative Party has pointed out that the Labour Party is funded by the Trade Union movement and therefore under their control. The latest figures published by the Electoral Commission show that of the £21.5m received by the Labour Party in 2023, just £5.9m came from the trade union movement, compared with £14.5m from companies and millionaires – a huge increase on the previous year.
Two wealthy individuals gave the Labour Party more money last year than all the trade unions combined. Gary Lubner, whose company played an important role busting international sanctions against the South African apartheid regime in the 1980s, gave £4.6m and supermarket owner, David Sainsbury, contributed £3.1m and his daughter Fran Perrin a £1m. All three are major funders of Labour Friends of Israel. (12)
Sunak is no doubt reluctant to talk about the funding of political parties because of its own record of taking money from dubious individuals who want favours in return. David Sainsbury's contribution to Labour was dwarfed by the £10m left by his cousin, John Sainsbury, the largest single donation ever received by the party. Frank Hester, an IT entrepreneur from Leeds has given £5m personally and another £5m through his firm, The Phoenix Partnership. Hester's firm has profited from public sector contracts and his ties with the party are under heightened scrutiny following the publication of an investigation by the Guardian that revealed he had said former Labour MP Diane Abbott made him "want to hate all black women" and should be shot. (13)
![Do the parties represent your values? (August, 2023)](0000000Starmer1.png)
The decision by Rishi Sunak and the right-wing press to say that Starmer is a left-wing politician has been completely unsuccessful and has enabled him to get away with the lies he told to party members. Except for Beth Rigby on Sky News, political journalists have not raised this issue in television interviews. His argument that he had to change these policies because the country can no longer afford it because Liz Truss destroyed the economy is not very convincing as pledges like increasing income tax for the top 5% of earners and reversing the Tories' cuts in corporation tax would have raised money. (14)
The Contrived Debate
Starmer and Sunak have ensured that issues such as the NHS, the economy and immigration have dominated this election campaign. The main theme has been that the other side cannot be trusted. There is a constant reference to each other's manifestos. Other subjects such as cost of living, social care, climate change, political donations, housing, Brexit, poverty, sewage and the water industries, nationalization, parliamentary reform, transport, prisons, the legal system, etc. have not been discussed in detail. According to a survey by the BBC, members of the public are angry that subjects such as litter, fly-tipping, shoplifting and assisted dying have not been ignored by the political parties during this campaign. (15)
Subjects such as taxation and the economy have been discussed in a narrow way by the two main political parties. Some aspects of the subject, where they both have the same policies, are ignored. A good example of this is personal tax thresholds. The decision made by the government and accepted by the Labour leadership, is for them to remain frozen until 2028. Tax thresholds mark the level of income at which different rates of income tax are paid. Normally they would be raised in line with increased prices. If that does not happen people are dragged into paying a higher rate of tax. It will create 3.2 million extra taxpayers by 2028, and 2.6 million more people will pay higher rates, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility, which independently assesses the government's economic plans. (16)
This is a good example of what is known as a "stealth tax" (an increase in the tax burden that the public either ignores or of which it is unaware). Governments love stealth taxes because by definition they carry no electoral liability and the Labour opposition, who expect to be in power after the election, is unwilling to draw attention to this stealth tax as they will benefit from this fiscal "gift" in the future. It has been argued that the number of people dragged into paying income tax in the UK has leapt by an estimated 4.4 million in three years because of the government's freeze on thresholds. (17)
Stealth taxes can be pernicious – especially when those on lower incomes are most affected. Since the fiscal year 2021/22, personal tax thresholds in the UK have been "frozen". The effect of this is to push the individual's average tax rate up from 11.6 per cent in 2021/22 to 13.6 per cent in 2027/28. The value of this extra revenue could be anything between £50 and £100 billion according to official forecasts, the exact amount depending on wage inflation and other frozen allowances.
As Victor Bulmer-Thomas, Professor Emeritus of London University has pointed out: "However, let us now imagine what would have to happen if the government had indexed the Personal Tax Allowance in line with inflation and still wanted to raise the same amount of income tax. It would then have to raise the basic rate of tax above 20 per cent…. We can now see why this particular stealth tax is so popular with the current government (and possibly the next one). Rather than having to announce a politically disastrous increase in the basic rate of tax from 20 per cent to 23.33 per cent, it can claim that there has been no increase in the basic rate and therefore boast that it has protected income earners while at the same time surreptitiously raising huge sums of money for the Exchequer."
Bulmer-Thomas goes onto argue that the impact of this stealth-tax is much more severe on those on lower incomes than those on higher ones. "At the end of the fiscal year 2021/22, the median pay of a full-time worker in the UK was £33,374... The median pay of the bottom decile of full-time workers (the lowest ten per cent) was £20,691. Using all the same assumptions as above with regard to inflation, wage increases and applying the frozen Personal Tax Allowance, a "typical" individual in the lowest decile would see their tax bill increase from £1,624 to £2,906." (18)
Poverty and the Election
There are other very important subjects that are not been debated because Sunak and Starmer know that their current policies will not deal with the problem. This includes the increasing use of food banks. This is an area of great embarrassment to the Conservative government, but Starmer never mentions it. In 2009, a year before Conservatives took power, the Trussell Trust claim that 26,000 people received emergency food parcels from food banks. By 2023 this figure had reached 2.99 million. More than 1.1 million of these parcels were distributed to children. Between April 2023 and March 2024, the number of people that used a food bank for the first time was 655,000. (19)
The other related subject that Starmer and Sunak have not been talking about is poverty. According to the Child Poverty Action Group child poverty in the UK increased by 100,000 children in 2022/23, bringing the total number of children in poverty to 4.3 million or 30% of all UK children. This is the highest figure since records have been kept on this subject.
Child Poverty Action Group claim the main reason for the growth in poverty is the decision by George Osborne in 2017 to bring in the two-child cap. This was a measure to restrict child tax credit and universal credit to the first two children in a households. This means families cannot claim about £3,200 a year per extra child. For the average family with more than two children this means a 10% cut in their income. In the three years after this policy was introduced family poverty went up by 37%. (20)
Abolishing the two-child limit would cost the government £2.5 billion in 2024-25. According to Lalitha Try of the Resolution Foundation: "Abolishing the two-child limit would cost the Government £2.5 billion in 2024-25, rising to £3.6 billion in 2024-25 prices if the policy were at full coverage. These costs are low compared to the harm that the policy causes, and scrapping the two-child limit would be one of the most efficient ways to drive down child poverty rates. If abolished today, 490,000 children would be lifted out of poverty." (21)
Keir Starmer has already made it clear that he has no intention of abolishing the two-child cap. Labour's decision not to include scrapping the policy in its manifesto has frustrated charities and anti-poverty campaigners. Research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) finds that when fully rolled out, the policy will affect one in five children, costing families an average of £4,300 a year, or 10% of their income. Among the poorest fifth of households, 38% will be affected. The policy already applies to about 2 million children, but by the end of the next parliament it will affect an additional 670,000, the IFS figures show. When questioned about this Starmer has said it had been a "difficult choice" not to promise to scrap it, but insisted his party could not make "unfunded promises". (22)
It could be argued that by abolishing the two-child cap would be good for economic growth. If you give money to the poor, they will spend it in the UK. Church leaders such as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, have called on the two-child benefit limit to be scrapped for moral reasons. According to a survey commissioned by Save the Children found 31% of Conservative voters and half of Labour and Lib Dem voters could be swayed in favour of a party making a promise to bring an end to the two-child benefit cap. (23)
Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister
Keir Starmer, however, is targeting former Conservative voters who have a desire to cut welfare benefits. He is not convinced that ending the two-child cap is a vote winner. He is aware that those most in need of help tend not to participate in General Elections. According to this government website: "Academics have noted that rates of abstention are higher in groups from lower socio-economic backgrounds and rise in areas that are ‘left behind'. A 2022 report on political inequality in Britain identified growing gaps across income, education and homeownership groups in voter turnout during 1964-2019, with non-homeowners, those with lower incomes and those with fewer educational qualifications less likely to vote." (24)
Starmer has made it clear that he is different from past Labour leaders with a strong concern for inequality and social injustice. In an interview he gave to the normally Conservative supporting, The Times, he said he will lead from the centre ground if elected prime minister and declared wealth creation to be his "number one mission". He added: "As a nation, broadly speaking we're a pretty reasonable, tolerant bunch but we are in the centre ground of politics. People don't like the extremes of the right or the left. They are reasonably tolerant. They want themselves, their families and the country to improve and make progress." Starmer said the ‘"only way our country can go forward" was if people and businesses make money. "I think it's a good thing that people are aspirational. When I say our number one mission is economic growth, you could say our number one mission is wealth creation. Now that's an odd thing for the Labour party to say. It might have been in the past." (25)
Starmer has even criticised Tony Blair for spending too much on public services when he was in power. When he was asked whether he was willing to revisit the party's spending plans, Starmer said: "It is always tempting for a government to go for tax and spend – but I'm not going to pull those levers, we don't intend to pull those levers, we want to go for the lever marked growth." Economists have pointed out that if he is telling the truth this means massive cuts to public services. "The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has calculated that all other – so-called unprotected – departments would face a cut of 3.5 per cent, a squeeze comparable to the era of austerity since after 2010." (26)
Starmer even attempted to gain support from The Sun readers over the subject of immigration. Speaking specifically about people who come to the UK illegally, the Labour leader told the newspaper: "I'll make sure we got planes going off…back to the countries where people came from." He then highlighted Bangladesh as an example, saying "at the moment people coming from countries like Bangladesh are not being removed." After his comments, Starmer faced huge criticism from members of the Bangladeshi community, as well as Labour Party members, including Stepney Green Councillor Sabina Akhtar, who has resigned over the issue. (27)
David Edgerton, professor of professor of modern British history at King's College London, is one of the few academics who has grasped the significance of the changes Starmer has made to the Labour Party. "We now live, despite appearances, in an age of consensus. We should perhaps call it Starnakism, a much more profound consensus than Blatcherism (the portmanteau of Blair and Thatcher) or the postwar Butskellism (Rab Butler and Hugh Gaitskell). Its most telling feature is that the Labour party's fundamental criticism of the Tories is their lack of competence, rather than their policies." Edgerton points out that Starmer now leads a party of "wealth creation and growth, not redistribution and equality." (28)
Starmer has been especially keen to tell the readers of right-wing newspapers that the Labour Party is no longer a left-wing political organisation. On 25th June he gave an exclusive interview to The Daily Mail: "Daily Mail readers were right to reject Labour in 2019, Sir Keir Starmer said last night. In a frank interview with this newspaper, the Labour leader insisted he had worked ruthlessly" to change the party since Jeremy Corbyn's era. He added: "We have campaigned as changed Labour and we will govern as changed Labour." (29)
![The Daily Mail (26th June 2024)](00000000Starmer58.png)
Starmer's attempt to gain support from the right-wing press was mostly unsuccessful. However, like in 1997, the Rubert Murdoch owned media did provide him with some favourable media reports and at the weekend before the General Election The Sunday Times said that the Tories have, in effect, "forfeited their right to govern". Its editorial says the paper believes it's now the right time for Labour to be "entrusted with restoring competence to government… The exhausted Conservatives are neither up to it nor up for it. There comes a time when change is the only option." (30)
The Tyranny of the Centre
The rest of the right-wing did not share these views. The Mail on Sunday said the country has "four days to stop a supermajority" and included comments from Prime Minister Rishi Sunak warning that Starmer will "wreck Britain in just 100 days". (31) The Sunday Telegraph's editorial said that it would be a "disaster for Britain if Labour were to be given unparalleled power to refashion the country". (32) The Sunday Express describes Mr Sunak's warning about Labour as chilling, calling it a nightmare vision that will engulf Britain if Starmer takes power. (33)
Despite the right-wing media attack on Keir Starmer the Tories remained over 20% behind in the polls. It now needed desperate measures and Sunak decided to take the risk of inviting Boris Johnson to join in his campaign. On 2nd July night, less than 48 hours before voters head to the polls, at a Tory campaign rally he accused Starmer of trying to "usher in the most leftwing Labour government since the war". He added that Starmer would increase taxes and fail to stand up to Vladimir Putin. He concluded: "Don't let the Putinistas deliver the Corbynistas. Don't let Putin's pet parrots give this entire country psittacosis – which is a disease you get, by the way, from cosying up to pet parrots. If you want to protect our democracy and our economy and keep this country strong abroad by spending 2.5% of our GDP on defence, which Labour still refuses to, then you know what to do, don't you, everybody." (34)
Johnson's main target was Nigel Farage who might capture the votes of disillusioned Tory voters. Reform UK was "full of Kremlin crawlers" and Putin's "pet parrots", he said. "Shame on them!" he declared. "Don't let the Putinistas deliver the Corbynistas!" Johnson may have persuaded some Tory voters who were unhappy with the way MPs ditched their hero in September 2022. However, his arrival on the scene will be another reminder of Partygate, the issue that saw the public opinion polls turn against the Conservative government. (35)
On the day of the General Election, Rubert Murdoch's The Sun endorsed the Labour Party in the general election, declaring "it is time for a change". In an editorial which has backed the Conservatives at every general election since 2010, said Rishi Sunak's party had become "a divided rabble" and needed "a period in opposition to unite". The tabloid said there were "still plenty of concerns about Labour", including its immigration plans, but leader Sir Keir Starmer had "fought hard to change his party for the better". (36)
The Daily Mail, had a front page that said if you vote Nigel Farage and you will get "soaring taxes, uncontrolled immigration with Rwanda scrapped, rampant wokery, betrayal of women's rights, Net Zero mania, weaker defence, surrender of our Brexit freedoms – and votes at 16 to ‘rig' future elections." (37)
The Daily Express remained loyal to the Conservative Party to the end. On the morning of the General Election its editorial was on the front page: "Today is a day of reckoning. The Conservative Party faces a punishing pounding at the ballot box. We believe Labour's unchecked power would diminish this great country of ours. Your frustration that not enough has been done to protect traditional Tory values is understandable. And it is, of course, your inalienable right to use your vote as a protest though the price might be very high. That is why we will continue carrying the torch of Conservatism until it is burning bright again. We urge you to Vote Tory." (38)
After weeks of hostile reporting of the Labour Party The Daily Telegraph finally accepted defeat and published details of its own final opinion poll that "predicted the largest Labour majority in history, with Sir Keir's Party winning 39 per cent of the vote and the Tories 20 per cent. Another poll predicted Labour would win the biggest majority of any party since 1832, and others this week have suggested the Conservatives could end up with as few as 64 seats. (39)
During the General Election campaign, the ruling elite attempted to portray Starmer as being a politician on the left, they were destined to fail. We are about to experience is what has been called "The Tyranny of the Centre".
References
(1) Ron Ledger, speech in the House of Commons (10th June 1955)
(2) Tam Dalyell, The Independent (16th December 2004)
(3) Lance Price, The Guardian (1st July 2006)
(4) The Independent (29th May 2006)
(5) The Sun (26th March 2024)
(6) Aaron Bastani, UnHerd (22nd June 2024)
(7) Peter Hitchens, The Daily Mail (9th June 2024)
(8) BBC News (6th June 2024)
(9) BBC News (11th January 2020)
(10) John Simkin, Sir Keir Starmer and his Broken Pledges (1st September 2023)
(11) Sir Keir Starmer, My Pledges to You (March 2020)
(12) Ethan Shone, Open Democracy (13 th March 2024)
(13) The Guardian (11th March 2024)
(14) Sky News (16th May 2024)
(15) BBC News (2nd July 2024)
(16) Office for Budget Responsibility, The impact of frozen or reduced personal tax thresholds (March 2023)
(17) The Guardian (27th June 2024)
(18) Victor Bulmer-Thomas, What a drag – the impact of the frozen personal allowance on those with lower incomes (17th January 2024)
(19) Trussell Trust, End of Year Stats (April 2004)
(20) Child Poverty Action Group (14th June 2022)
(21) Lalitha Try, An analysis of the impact of the two-child limit and the benefit cap (31st January 2024)
(22) The Guardian (17th June 2024)
(23) Eleanor Langford, Voters want Labour to promise to scrap two-child benefit limit (19th May 2024)
(24) Emmeline Ledgerwood & Clare Lally, Election turnout: Why do some people not vote? (10th April 2024)
(25) Sir Keir Starmer, The Times (31st May, 2024)
(26) Hugo Gye, Labour set to announce big public spending cuts after ruling out tax rises (13th June 2024)
(27) ITV News (30th June 2024)
(28) David Edgerton, The Guardian (28th June 2024)
(29) The Daily Mail (26th June 2024)
(30) The Sunday Times (30th June)
(31) The Mail on Sunday (30th June 2024)
(32) The Sunday Telegraph (30th June 2024)
(33) The Sunday Express (30th June 2024)
(34) The Guardian (3rd July 2024)
(35) Jon Craig, Sky News (3rd July 2024)
(36) The Sun (4th July 2024)
(37) The Daily Mail (4th July 2024)
(38) The Daily Express (4th July 2024)
(39) The Daily Telegraph (4th July 2024)
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Sir Keir Starmer and his Broken Pledges (1st September, 2023)
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The Death of Liberalism: Charles and George Trevelyan (19th December, 2016)
Donald Trump and the Crisis in Capitalism (18th November, 2016)
Victor Grayson and the most surprising by-election result in British history (8th October, 2016)
Left-wing pressure groups in the Labour Party (25th September, 2016)
The Peasant's Revolt and the end of Feudalism (3rd September, 2016)
Leon Trotsky and Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party (15th August, 2016)
Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of England (7th August, 2016)
The Media and Jeremy Corbyn (25th July, 2016)
Rupert Murdoch appoints a new prime minister (12th July, 2016)
George Orwell would have voted to leave the European Union (22nd June, 2016)
Is the European Union like the Roman Empire? (11th June, 2016)
Is it possible to be an objective history teacher? (18th May, 2016)
Women Levellers: The Campaign for Equality in the 1640s (12th May, 2016)
The Reichstag Fire was not a Nazi Conspiracy: Historians Interpreting the Past (12th April, 2016)
Why did Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst join the Conservative Party? (23rd March, 2016)
Mikhail Koltsov and Boris Efimov - Political Idealism and Survival (3rd March, 2016)
Why the name Spartacus Educational? (23rd February, 2016)
Right-wing infiltration of the BBC (1st February, 2016)
Bert Trautmann, a committed Nazi who became a British hero (13th January, 2016)
Frank Foley, a Christian worth remembering at Christmas (24th December, 2015)
How did governments react to the Jewish Migration Crisis in December, 1938? (17th December, 2015)
Does going to war help the careers of politicians? (2nd December, 2015)
Art and Politics: The Work of John Heartfield (18th November, 2015)
The People we should be remembering on Remembrance Sunday (7th November, 2015)
Why Suffragette is a reactionary movie (21st October, 2015)
Volkswagen and Nazi Germany (1st October, 2015)
David Cameron's Trade Union Act and fascism in Europe (23rd September, 2015)
The problems of appearing in a BBC documentary (17th September, 2015)
Mary Tudor, the first Queen of England (12th September, 2015)
Jeremy Corbyn, the new Harold Wilson? (5th September, 2015)
Anne Boleyn in the history classroom (29th August, 2015)
Why the BBC and the Daily Mail ran a false story on anti-fascist campaigner, Cedric Belfrage (22nd August, 2015)
Women and Politics during the Reign of Henry VIII (14th July, 2015)
The Politics of Austerity (16th June, 2015)
Was Henry FitzRoy, the illegitimate son of Henry VIII, murdered? (31st May, 2015)
The long history of the Daily Mail campaigning against the interests of working people (7th May, 2015)
Nigel Farage would have been hung, drawn and quartered if he lived during the reign of Henry VIII (5th May, 2015)
Was social mobility greater under Henry VIII than it is under David Cameron? (29th April, 2015)
Why it is important to study the life and death of Margaret Cheyney in the history classroom (15th April, 2015)
Is Sir Thomas More one of the 10 worst Britons in History? (6th March, 2015)
Was Henry VIII as bad as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin? (12th February, 2015)
The History of Freedom of Speech (13th January, 2015)
The Christmas Truce Football Game in 1914 (24th December, 2014)
The Anglocentric and Sexist misrepresentation of historical facts in The Imitation Game (2nd December, 2014)
The Secret Files of James Jesus Angleton (12th November, 2014)
Ben Bradlee and the Death of Mary Pinchot Meyer (29th October, 2014)
Yuri Nosenko and the Warren Report (15th October, 2014)
The KGB and Martin Luther King (2nd October, 2014)
The Death of Tomás Harris (24th September, 2014)
Simulations in the Classroom (1st September, 2014)
The KGB and the JFK Assassination (21st August, 2014)
West Ham United and the First World War (4th August, 2014)
The First World War and the War Propaganda Bureau (28th July, 2014)
Interpretations in History (8th July, 2014)
Alger Hiss was not framed by the FBI (17th June, 2014)
Google, Bing and Operation Mockingbird: Part 2 (14th June, 2014)
Google, Bing and Operation Mockingbird: The CIA and Search-Engine Results (10th June, 2014)
The Student as Teacher (7th June, 2014)
Is Wikipedia under the control of political extremists? (23rd May, 2014)
Why MI5 did not want you to know about Ernest Holloway Oldham (6th May, 2014)
The Strange Death of Lev Sedov (16th April, 2014)
Why we will never discover who killed John F. Kennedy (27th March, 2014)
The KGB planned to groom Michael Straight to become President of the United States (20th March, 2014)
The Allied Plot to Kill Lenin (7th March, 2014)
Was Rasputin murdered by MI6? (24th February 2014)
Winston Churchill and Chemical Weapons (11th February, 2014)
Pete Seeger and the Media (1st February 2014)
Should history teachers use Blackadder in the classroom? (15th January 2014)
Why did the intelligence services murder Dr. Stephen Ward? (8th January 2014)
Solomon Northup and 12 Years a Slave (4th January 2014)
The Angel of Auschwitz (6th December 2013)
The Death of John F. Kennedy (23rd November 2013)
Adolf Hitler and Women (22nd November 2013)
New Evidence in the Geli Raubal Case (10th November 2013)
Murder Cases in the Classroom (6th November 2013)
Major Truman Smith and the Funding of Adolf Hitler (4th November 2013)
Unity Mitford and Adolf Hitler (30th October 2013)
Claud Cockburn and his fight against Appeasement (26th October 2013)
The Strange Case of William Wiseman (21st October 2013)
Robert Vansittart's Spy Network (17th October 2013)
British Newspaper Reporting of Appeasement and Nazi Germany (14th October 2013)
Paul Dacre, The Daily Mail and Fascism (12th October 2013)
Wallis Simpson and Nazi Germany (11th October 2013)
The Activities of MI5 (9th October 2013)
The Right Club and the Second World War (6th October 2013)
What did Paul Dacre's father do in the war? (4th October 2013)
Ralph Miliband and Lord Rothermere (2nd October 2013)