Cold War Puerto Rico - the story of how Washington used the tools of 'McCarthyism' to keep its Caribbean fortress as a colony.

Most of the people on the cover of my new book were imprisoned multiple times in the 1950s as J Edgar Hoover orchestrated a red scare on the island. 1/3 As Trump mounts an authoritarian attack on 'radicals' across the US and uses Puerto Rico for a military build up against Venezuela, Cold War Puerto Rico puts this in context and draws lessons for today.

The book's out next year but is on offer for pre-order now. See below. 2/3

1/ How YouGov's dodgy MRP poll treated Birmingham.

Headlines:
- It classified every seat as 'safe Labour'
- It forecasted Labour's vote share to rise across the city, despite it falling in the W Midlands mayoral election
- Its treatment of 'others' suggests political/ethnic bias 2/ YouGov's forecast that every seat in Birmingham is safe for Labour suggests MRP's prediction of a Labour landslide is based on rocky foundations.

In my view, though Starmer's likely to win, his majority will be reduced by some losses in 'safe' seats.

https://x.com/YouGov/status/1797659498427154538

1/ The big vote for Labour in 2017 posed a real headache for centrists.

The truth is that they oppose left policies - however popular. But they usually hide behind the argument that Labour can't win from the left.

So how do they reconcile this to Corbyn gaining 12.88m votes? 2/ Enter Peter Mandelson - last year he told Kings College students that 2017 was "a re-run of the referendum" with 2015 LibDems "swinging behind" Labour.

But was it that simple? True, 600,000 LibDems DID switch - but so did 700,000 UKIP voters (British Electoral Study).

Why?

My book on the 2017 campaign, Game Changer, is in short supply. The paperback's sold out. There's a Kindle at £5.49 (price set by the publisher). And I have 22 copies of the hardback left - on sale via my website at half price (£8.00 inc postage). See: steve-howell.com/game-changer-e… I'm still trying to get the rights back from Hachette and hope to re-publish it with an introduction on what we've discovered since, but that could take a while!

1/ On this day in 2017, Jeremy Corbyn stunned his enemies by denying the Tories a majority when they'd been expected to win by landslide.

Labour's 12.88m votes/40% vote share was the party's best result for 20 years. We gained seats (30 net) for the first time since 1997 too. 2/ When Theresa May called the election, the Sun predicted 'Blue Murder' and said she would 'kill off Labour'.

May wanted Brexit to be the central issue - but Corbyn said Labour accepted the referendum result and made it about transforming Britain 'for the many not the few'.

1/ Dangerous misinformation.

On March 30, the Guardian reported the UN human rights chief saying Russia may be committing war crimes. But I checked: she didn't specify Russia (see text). Why? Because the UN HR Commission is also investigating Ukrainian government war crimes. 2/ War propaganda by omission.

The Guardian also quotes her as saying her office had received credible allegations of Russia using cluster bombs. But its report omits her next sentence: "We are also investigating allegations that Ukrainian armed forces have used such weapons."

1/ No Fly Zone - benign or barking?

This widely-quoted ex-General presents it as fact that war with Russia is only a matter of time.

MAD - mutually assured destruction - used to be seen as a deterrent to war, but here it's real madness: argued as if it's our only choice.

https://twitter.com/chris_deverell/status/1500507515733348353

2/ When it comes to destruction, Deverell knows a thing or two: he helped plan the invasion of Iraq.

In his tweets on Ukraine, he's honest enough to admit (others don't) that if you support a No Fly Zone you must also be willing to deploy ground troops.

https://twitter.com/chris_deverell/status/1500507517151031298?s=20&t=n_7Z9w0sTx5YK1U2o3LmbQ

1/ NATO's rejection of a No Fly Zone averts a wider war in which deaths would be counted in millions, possibly tens of millions.

Zelensky's angry reaction may be understandable, but how did he come to think that NATO would step in and go to war with Russia in the first place?

https://twitter.com/BBCWorld/status/1499980568745943043

2/ Western leaders and their commentariat have been saying for months that the response to a Russian invasion would be limited to sanctions. In The Times (15.1.22), Roger Boyes put it bluntly: "No current member of NATO would be willing to die in a ditch defending Ukraine."

Great to catch up with Jeremy in Shrewsbury and give him a copy of Collateral Damage.

Typically, it was a priority for him to make the journey to join a packed event to celebrate the #Shrewsbury24 Appeal Court ruling that the convictions of the building workers were unsafe. Terry Renshaw, one of the #Shrewsbury24, told the event to mark their victory: "If I get emotional, forgive me. The thing is, we didn't give up. It took 47 years, but we kept going. We took on the police, the government, the judiciary and, yes, the secret service - and we won."

1/5 The Sunday Times has been sold a dud by someone with an axe to grind.

Labour's targeting (though always open to debate) was rational, ICM provided weekly private polls to check trends and MPs hostile to Corbyn got support.

This is not the full list.

https://twitter.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1208503645584666626

2/5 When I started working on the campaign in early Nov, there was a target list of 96 seats, of which 30 were defensive. It comprised the Tory seats with the narrowest majorities and our most vulnerable seats. It wasn't secret, all members of the strategy team had access to it.

1/6 The BBC is disputing Corbyn’s claim that the Tories have "slashed taxes for the richest".

@BBCRealityCheck says it's “hard" to describe Tory changes as "taxes for the richest being slashed”.

Really? This needs its own reality check. Bear with me.

https://twitter.com/BBCRealityCheck/status/1189952719865430020

2/6 First, there's a sleight of hand in defining 'richest'.

@BBCRealityCheck acknowledges the Tories abolished the 50p tax rate for income of £150,000+.

But it measures the impact of this by using data for the top 10% when less than 1% of earners - the very richest - benefited.

1/5 Prof Dorling's right call Blair the King in the sense he presided over the highest level of inequality since 1929.

But it was Thatcher who set in motion the huge redistribution of wealth & income in favour of the owners of capital of the last 40 years.

https://twitter.com/FromSteveHowell/status/1139598338481897472

2/5 Thatcher gave owners of capital a bigger share of the cake in three main ways: a/ shifting taxation from capital to working people, b/ crushing the miners/attacking union rights, c/ opening up more of the economy to profit-making through a massive programme of privatisation.

1/4 Was Jeremy Corbyn right to say inequality has been rising for decades?

Tony Blair has turned this into a debate about his record. But he hasn't refuted the basic facts - because he can't: whichever measure you take inequality has been on an upward trend since the 1970s. 2/4 IMO the most fundamental indicator of inequality is the graph on the previous tweet showing wages and salaries as a % of national income. This is basically the share of the cake that working people (even very well paid ones) get - and it's fallen from over 60% to 50%.

1/7 I voted Remain in 2016 on the basis that some reform of the EU's pro-market rules was possible, working with socialists across Europe. But if we're going to sail under the R&R banner again, I think we need a reality check. Things have changed.

https://twitter.com/paulmasonnews/status/1134718149604118528

2/7 At the heart of the R&R debate are the EU's rules on state aid, which preclude anything that distorts competition. These rules are rooted in the 1957 Treaty of Rome and would require a new treaty supported by all member states to be changed. So do they give any wiggle room?

1/7 Paul Mason says he'll "circle the wagons" around Corbyn - but it looks like that's to starve him into abandoning his principles and throwing some his best allies to the wolves.

His article is not the answer to a coup but the manifesto for it.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/… 2/7 At the heart of Paul Mason's attack is the claim that Labour's 2017 electoral advance was based "above all" on "large scale" tactical voting by Remainers. This is the basis for his assertion that Labour must embrace Remain and a 2nd referendum. But it's a false premise.

1/4 Labour ended with a net loss of 63 seats (Tories 1,269). The pattern of Labour losses/gains is key. The 248 Councils where seats were contested split roughly 3 ways: in just over a third Labour made gains, in under a third we made losses - of these, 21 saw losses of 5+ seats. 2/4 Labour losses were geographically very concentrated: the 21 councils where we made losses of 5 seats or more were ALL in Midlands and Northern Brexit-voting areas, with the north east/Cumbria and former mining areas (Barnsley, NE Derbyshire and Bolsover) to the fore.

1/ Observer wants Corbyn to explain how replacing 'the' with 'a' customs union "will make Britons...more in charge of their destiny."
To save him trouble:
THE customs union: rules made by EU, we're 'rule takers'.
A (new) customs union: rules agreed jointly by UK & EU.
#PLPwatch 2/ The @Guardian Observer is supporting Labour rebels who want UK to be in THE customs union. This could not be more at odds with the idea of "taking back control". People are not stupid. They will see through it and will know it is a Trojan horse to sabotage Brexit. #PLPWatch