Morning Star

The Morning Star provides an increasingly satisfactory antidote to the Guardian, its morphing into a non sectarian left daily newspaper which is essential reading. It used to be the in house journal of the Communist Party of Britain but it is fair to say that it gives the Green Party excellent coverage, for example, it was the only national newspaper to send a full time reporter to our conference last week.

I often get phoned for a comment by the Morning Star and they run lots of the stories the Green Party press office sends out. Caroline Lucas used to have a column with them and I now write for them once a month.

Well so far so biased but even if they ran none of my stuff I would say this is a long way from the tractor factories of the past, they run stuff from pretty much every section of the British left George Galloway, John McDonnell, Jeremy Corbyn, even the excellent Keith Flett (who is member of the SWP) and John Lister (who I think is involved with Socialist Resistance).

They run interesting material, some of which I disagree with pretty vehemently, which they see as advancing left debt...I think their trajectory from being I guess a fairly rigid party organ to an interesting source of idea provides a good lesson of how all of us 'leftists' 'progressives' or whatever could strike together without losing our souls.

One big draw back is you need a subscription, well I think they should go open source but I have sent them a subscription...I guess it is use them or lose them.

The story of the British Communist Party, formed by Lenin despite some protest from the grassroots and its division between pro-Soviet and pro-post modern Euro communists around Marxism Today is a post for another day.

I guess I never would have thought myself calling Morning Star a resource but it is an increasingly good one...I think the more grass roots model of socialism from Latin America is having a ripple effect even back here in blighty.

Well I guess they still run pro GM stories but the fact they give anti- GM a hearing is progress in my book.

Any way here is a story that ran from Darren Johnson a couple of days ago, good illustration of where all Green Party members agree on the dangers of privatisation:

Metronet contractors could face charges
(Wednesday 20 February 2008)

LONDON Assembly Green Party member Darren Johnson warned contractors for failed Tube privateer Metronet on Wednesday that police could be called in over "phantom work."

Mr Johnston said that London Mayor Ken Livingstone had responded positively to a suggestion that he should "name and shame" Metronet contractors if evidence emerges that they were paid for work which was never done.

Mr Livingstone also promised to present any such evidence to the fraud squad.

This follows an admission to the London Assembly last week by Transport for London Tube managing director Tim O'Toole that it was unclear whether work which had been paid for had actually been done.

The Metronet contractors were all shareholders of the company and Mr Johnson is pressing Transport for London to establish whether any benefited from "padded contracts."

Mr Johnson added that the way that Metronet was run was a "scandal," saying: "I welcome the mayor's pledge to call in the fraud squad if he finds any evidence that money was paid for work which didn't get done.

"It is bad enough that the taxpayer is being landed with the bill for the collapse of the government's disastrous public-private partnership, but Londoners will be demanding justice if TfL uncovers clear evidence that Metronet's shareholder companies benefited from padded contracts and profited from pocketing money for work which didn't get done.

"Opening the books on the Metronet disaster is the best way of convincing the government to stop pursuing a policy of privatisation."

Mr Livingstone responded that he would be happy to name and shame such people.