Neoliberalism isn’t a “buzzword”. It’s the near 50-year political, economic and ideological project that has brought so many communities to their knees.
It smashed workers’ rights, imposed austerity, deregulated the banks that then crashed the economy, privatised public utilities like water and energy, sold off council houses, handed tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations, turned universities into an unaffordable market, transformed public services into sources of private profit through outsourcing and PFI, and much more.
It's the root cause of so much of what has gone wrong in our country. And it was all done to enrich the tiny elite that Tony Blair now so clearly represents.
Morgan McSweeney’s resignation should not be treated as a cleansing moment. He was not an aberration. He was the tip of an iceberg.
What he represents is a political culture that has dominated Labour for a generation. A culture forged under Blair and Mandelson that taught the party to be relaxed about extreme wealth, comfortable in the orbit of billionaires, lobbyists and corporate power, and increasingly detached from the lives of the people it was created to represent.
The Mandelson scandal matters because it exposes that culture in its rawest form. Proximity to wealth and power was not a by-product. It was the point. Access was normalised. Influence was laundered as ‘serious politics’. Moral judgement was dulled by the belief that being close to money and power was a sign of maturity rather than capture.
That mindset hollowed Labour out. It replaced a party rooted in working-class life with a professional political caste fluent in donor networks, private dinners and elite reassurance, while communities were told to accept decline as the price of ‘responsible’ government. Politics became about managing optics and markets, not challenging vested interests or redistributing power.
McSweeney’s departure changes none of that on its own. Unless Labour confronts the culture that rewarded closeness to wealth, blurred ethical lines and treated democratic accountability as an inconvenience, this will amount to little more than damage limitation.
Remove one operator and the system that produced him remains. And unless that system is dismantled, Labour will continue to lose its moral authority, its social base, and ultimately its right to govern, leaving the ground clear for forces far worse to exploit the wreckage.
Streeting is trying to distance himself from his best friend Mandelson.
So if you've got any respect at all for Wes Streeting, don't retweet this photo. 😁
@Halfords_uk Booked in at 08:30, arrived 08:20, didn’t start work until 09:30 and charged £2 for premium slot. Keep working on customer service @Halfords_uk
@Halfords_uk Booked in at 08:30, arrived 08:20, didn’t start work until 09:30 and charged £2 for premium slot. Keep working on customer service @Halfords_uk
Hillsborough campaigner Scraton refuses OBE.
“I could not accept an honour tied in name to the 'British Empire'.
"In my teaching I remain a strong critic of the historical, cultural and political contexts of imperialism and their international legacy."
https://t.co/xgjaIzQtvb
Labour just sold £1.3bn of NHS services to private equity.
Pay-off for political donations.
Private equity =profiteering, asset stripping, low investment, staff exploitation, poor care.
30%-40% money vanishes in profits - people get less for more money
https://t.co/TzPGgXfU40
We ran a poll ahead of the General Election. The majority of respondents who planned to vote Conservative, Lib Dem AND Labour did not want private companies involved in delivering NHS services.
Who is Wes Streeting listening to? It’s not voters 🚨
@EveryDoctorUK
🧵 This week - under a Labour government - NHS community services for the entire population of Wilshire (half a million people), were handed to a private equity backed company, @HCRGCareGroup, formerly known as VirginCare. 1/n
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Prickly Sunak meets member of public.
Patronises them, laughs at them, and then walks away halfway through encounter.
A genuine sign of contempt from PM towards ordinary voters.