Attention to the Unseen

Suzanne Moore writes: Splitters. Traitors. The People’s Front of Judea. I am quite enjoying the current shenanigans of those people who say they just can’t take it any more. Some are sick of Brexit. Some want a people’s vote. Some are disgusted at the acceptance of antisemitism. Some are probably terrible careerists out only for themselves, though this seems a rather unlikely way to do it. Some may be people you want to go to the pub with. Some you…

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The Guardian reports: Ian Austin has become the ninth MP to quit the Labour party this week, although he told his local newspaper he had no plans to join the Independent Group (TIG), founded earlier this week by some former colleagues and Tory defectors. The MP for Dudley North in the West Midlands has been disaffected with the party leadership for a couple of years and told the Express & Star newspaper there was a “culture of extremism, antisemitism and…

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Jamelle Bouie writes: Bernie Sanders’s most prominent message is economic, organized around a critique of capitalist inequality, an indictment of the ultrawealthy and a call for expansive new social programs. It helped propel him to a strong second in the 2016 Democratic primary campaign and has returned as the marquee message for his 2020 campaign, which he announced on Tuesday with a promise to “complete the revolution.” Unfortunately for his 2020 campaign, Sanders is less distinct on economic policy than…

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Martin Kettle writes: Heidi Allen, Anna Soubry and Sarah Wollaston are not the first MPs to break away from the Conservative party. The list of Tory resigners goes back to Winston Churchill in 1904 and beyond. And they are unlikely to be the last. Back in October I had a coffee at the Tory conference with a cabinet minister who confessed: “Part of me is longing for Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees-Mogg to become leader so the rest of us…

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The Washington Post reports: For the second time in six months, Microsoft has identified a Russian government-affiliated operation targeting prominent think tanks that have been critical of Russia, the company said in a blog post Tuesday evening. The “spear-phishing” attacks — in which hackers send out phony emails intended to trick people into visiting websites that look authentic but in fact enable them to infiltrate their victims’ corporate computer systems — were tied to the APT28 hacking group, a unit…

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Rafael Behr writes: When does a church become so broad that its congregants no longer profess the same faith? For Labour, that challenge goes beyond the present rows over Brexit and antisemitism. It drills into deep ideological faultlines. Corbyn’s party has no leftmost boundary. There is no form of radical socialism that it deems taboo. It welcomes people who wave hammer and sickle flags, whether they are unaware of atrocities committed under that banner or simply relaxed about them. It…

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The Daily Beast reports: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has tapped Faiz Shakir to serve as his campaign manager for his second run at the White House, The Daily Beast has learned. In hiring Shakir, Sanders brings into the fold one of the Democratic Party’s better-traveled operatives—an official with limited campaign experience but with ties to the party’s think tank infrastructure, its Hill operations, and the larger progressive universe. Shakir joins the Sanders operation from the American Civil Liberties Union where…

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