Originally published in The Meteor, 11 May, 2021. The picket line outside Queens Road Depot exhibits camaraderie, community and the carnivalesque. Solidarity is undoubtedly strong in the communities supporting the bus drivers in their ‘fire and rehire’ industrial dispute with Go North West. I’m standing in a small school playing…

Greater Manchester must retrofit 60,000 residential and commercial buildings a year to be zero carbon by 2038. Cooperatives and small businesses have led the way to make homes fit for the future, but not on the scale needed due to financial restrictions, skills shortages and inappropriate supply chains. Local authorities…

The pandemic has made clear what really matters to our economy. Let’s restart it selectively, writes Alex King This article appeared originally in The Independent on 21 April 2020. As the government announced that lockdown restrictions would continue for at least another three weeks, the Office of Budget Responsibility, the Treasury’s official forecaster, made a bleak prediction. …

Just months ago, the government described these workers as ‘low skilled’, now they’re the ones keeping our country going This article was originally published in the Independent. Amid the first nationwide school closure in modern British history, 10 Downing Street this week published a list of “key workers”: those deemed “critical to the Covid-19 response” in a bid to ensure that the country continues to function during the pandemic.

During the 2019 election, I canvassed in five marginal constituencies in the North West and one in the South West, all of which Labour lost. We were brimming with confidence and with hope. “We are ready. Bring it on.” The country’s public services on their knees, Brexit stubbornly unrealised, an…

I never thought I would say this but — Defending champions New Zealand are out of the world cup. England are just one win away from reliving the glories of 2003 and lifting the Webb Ellis cup for the second time. With England’s victory, the mythology of the invincible All…

On 26 August, 1978, East Germans woke up to the headline banded across a special edition of Neues Deutschland: “Der erste Deutscher im All” — the first German in space. Travelling alongside Russian Valery Bykovsky as part of the Soviet Union’s Interkosmos programme, Sigmund Jähn the cosmonaut spent almost eight…

Lemn Sissay, award-winning and internationally acclaimed poet, was stolen from his birth mother and given to a foster family. He was thrown out by his foster parents at the age of 12 and sent to several children’s homes. …

Stepping on stage at the Durham Miners’ Gala the weekend before last, Jeremy Corbyn had decided to talk about climate change. ““Labour will superpower a new industrial revolution for the north with a record investment blitz,” he said. Then came the masterstroke. “Where the mines fuelled the first Industrial Revolution…