Anti-migrant Reform UK makes major gains in elections in England

Robert Stevens

The far-right Reform UK made major gains in the Thursday’s elections in Britain at the expense of both the ruling Labour Party and opposition Conservatives.

Reform, led by Nigel Farage, won the majority of seats in local elections in England and won the parliamentary by-election for the Runcorn and Helsby constituency in northwest England—formerly considered one of the safest Labour seats.

Nigel Farage addressing Reform UK rally during the General Election campaign at Trago Mills, Devon, June 2024 [Photo by Owain.davies - Own work / CC BY-SA 4.0]

The seat became vacant when Labour MP Mike Amesbury stood down after being convicted of assaulting a man who he punched repeatedly in the street.

Elections were contested across 24 local authorities and 1,641 council seats; and for seats on 14 county councils and eight unitary authorities in England. Six mayoral elections were held, including inaugural mayor contests in Greater Lincolnshire and Hull and East Yorkshire.

Reform UK won Runcorn and Helsby by just six votes (12,645 to 12,639) but slashed Labour’s majority of almost 14,700 at the general election held in July last year. The narrowest margin of victory in a by-election since the war was therefore achieved due to a 17 percent swing to Reform on a turnout of 46 percent. Reform also picked up votes from the Conservatives to win the Runcorn seat—with the Tories share of the vote falling by nearly 9 percent from the 2024 general election.

Local elections, held on a rotating basis, were mainly in Conservative held seats that were last contested in 2021, when the Tories were in power under Boris Johnson. Around 1,000 of the seats (957) in the local election were being defended by the Tories, with just 297 being defended by Labour and 224 by the Liberal Democrats.

Reform won most seats taking an average of around 10 percent above other parties. With 20 of 23 councils declaring results by Friday evening, Reform had taken eight, winning 635 seats. The Tories lost 15 councils, taking just 300 seats—a fall of 633. Labour lost one council as it took just 88 seats—a fall of 180. The Liberal Democrats won three councils.

Reform won the mayoralties in Greater Lincolnshire and Hull & East Yorkshire. The party’s Tory defector candidate Andrea Jenkyns, with a huge majority of nearly 40,000 votes, was elected Greater Lincolnshire mayor, and Reform also took Lincolnshire council wiping out a 38 seat Tory majority. Giving vent to Reform’s anti-immigrant agenda, Jenkyns said of asylum seekers in her victory speech, “I say no to putting people in hotels… Tents are good enough for France, they should be good enough for here in Britain.”

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and Reform UK mayoral candidate Andrea Jenkyns look towards the media during their election campaign in Scunthorpe, England, April 29, 2025 [AP Photo/Darren Staples]

Reform also took Kent, Lancashire, Staffordshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire councils.

Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party was partially shielded by contesting fewer seats but still proved itself to be massively unpopular after having enforced cuts to pensioners income and £5 billion in welfare cuts with Starmer’s own ratings falling to a record low. Such is the hatred for Starmer that party strategists advised him not to visit Runcorn to campaign for Labour’s candidate.

As well as losing Runcorn, Labour suffered huge losses on Durham Council to Farage. Labour had run the northeast council for almost a century until 2021. With Durham under no overall control, Reform managed to capture the 50 seats needed to take the council (taking 65 in total), with Labour winning just four. An ecstatic Daily Mail described Durham, located in a former coal mining region, as the “spiritual home of the labour movement”.

Reform more than consolidated the gains it made in last July’s General Election in which Farage’s party won over 4 million votes and 14 percent of the poll. Due to Britain’s undemocratic first past the post system, this translated into just five MPs in a 650 seat Parliament. Just prior to the local elections, however, it was polling as the first party nationally on around 26 points, ahead of Labour on 24 and the Tories on 21.

Based on the local election results, Sky News estimated that Reform’s national share of the vote in a general election would reach 32 percent, well ahead of Labour on 19 percent and the Tories on 18 percent.

While the official policy of Kemi Badenoch’s Tories and the Reform leadership is that they will not form a coalition at a national level, with Farage deriding the Tories as a “waste of space”, the parliamentary arithmetic now points to a Reform UK/Tory coalition and the wipeout of the Starmer government at the next election.

Former Tory cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg told the World at One on Friday, “In terms of policy, there’s very little difference between the Conservative party and Reform. It’s basically a matter of personality… I think we need to work together. … conservatism is having a fantastic 24 hours.”

Reform originates in Farage’s earlier UK Independence Party and the Brexit Party (which became Reform UK in 2021). It has only been able to make a breakthrough due to the abandonment of any defence of the working class by Labour and the trade unions.

This has created fertile ground for Farage to win a hearing—including among a layer of mainly older workers in former industrial heartlands—based on an appeal to social despair being channeled into scapegoating migrants for the decimation of housing, education and the National Health Service.

Labour and the Tories share much of the anti-immigration platform of Reform, with Labour boasting of its “successes” keeping out migrants and even using Reform’s turquoise branding. But Farage’s party continually insists that only it is serious about slashing migration. He called in the election campaign for a new Department of Deportations to be created. His agenda is constantly promoted by a filthy tabloid media, keeping a daily tally of how many “illegal” migrants get to the UK on small boats and denouncing Labour’s policies, as did the Express this week, as “migration madness”.

Reform UK are openly aping the fascist US President Donald Trump, who Farage counts as a friend having spoken at Trump rallies and attending his inauguration in January. One of Reform’s slogans is “Make Britain Great Again”. On Thursday, Farage announced that he would end Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies in any council Reform won, and reiterated his call for a Trump/Elon Musk-style Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in Britain.

Nigel Farage, the then leader of the Brexit Party speaking at a Donald Trump campaign rally at Phoenix Goodyear Airport in Goodyear, Arizona, October 2020 [Photo by Gage Skidmore / CC BY-SA 2.0]

But not only does Labour fuel anti-migrant sentiment. Its pro-business agenda and refusal to put forward anything whatsoever to ameliorate massive social hardship, with the cost of living at unbearable levels, allows Reform to portray migration as the root of all evil.

Jeremy Corbyn’s betrayal of the mass movement that backed him as Labour leader—centred on demands to end austerity and war and to kick out Labour’s Blairites—put Starmer, a right-wing man of the state, at the party’s head—paving the way for his government’s savage welfare cuts, warmongering and anti-migrant policies.

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) campaigned in the local elections via their Stand Up to Racism campaign, declaring that it was “so important” that they “labelled Reform UK a racist party and campaigned against the myths about immigration.” 

But while the SWP raised the “need for a left alternative at the ballot box that could mobilise breaking with Labour to the left,” those they say should lead this project—Corbyn and the trade union leaders—have no intention of leading any movement against Starmer. Indeed, the pseudo-left’s recent Summit of Resistance, with Corbyn the main draw, specifically ruled out the formation of any political party to challenge Labour “from the left”.

Jeremy Corbyn speaking at the Summit of Resistance

Reform UK have filled the political vacuum this creates. Its rise belatedly mirrors already far advanced developments in major European countries, as evidenced by the rise of the fascist Alternative For Germany and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France.

Teamsters financial documents show record income, 213 officials making $200,000 or more a year

Alex Findijs

Teamsters General President Sean O'Brien giving a contract campaign update, July 1, 2023. [Photo: Teamsters]

The 20,000 layoffs at UPS are the latest in massive attacks on the working class with the support of the union bureaucracy. Since the passage of a new UPS contract in 2023 on the basis of lies, tens of thousands of jobs have been destroyed through the so-called “Network of the Future” restructuring, with the guilty silence of the Teamsters union.

Their role in the layoffs express the hostility of the bureaucrats to workers they claim to represent. This is not the result of bad policies but of social interests. This has drawn it into alignment with the extreme right against the working class. Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien, elected four years ago as a bogus “reform” candidate, is one of many top union officials openly backing Trump, especially his tariff policies which will put countless Teamsters out of a job and lead to war.

These social interests were exposed in a recently published annual financial reports for the Teamsters for 2024. The Teamsters bureaucracy sits upon a treasure chest of nearly $650 million dollars, which it uses almost exclusively to pay itself exorbitant salaries and benefits.

These documents demonstrate that the bureaucracy is an unreformable institution that must be swept away by a rebellion of the rank-and-file to return power to the shop floor and seize back control over the immense financial resources stolen from it.

Documented assets of the Teamsters International is the highest it has been in at least 25 years. At $650 million dollars in 2024, the Teamsters bureaucracy holds immense wealth in the form of financial and real estate assets, not even including the assets of various local unions.

Annual income for the Teamsters is also the highest in decades, at $375 million. Of this sum, $215 million is generated from member dues, at an average of $172 a year per member. A further $120 million was made from the sale of financial assets to fund the purchase of additional assets, primarily Collective Trust Funds, which are typically used in retirement accounts.

This is what the bureaucracy is preoccupied with, not defending its members but shuffling assets around to maximize benefits for itself.

The rank-and-file received just $23 million back in strike benefits. The rest was largely consumed by the bureaucracy for General Overhead ($29 million), Representational Activities ($61 million), Union Administration ($20 million), and employee benefits ($43 million). Distributed among these categories are employee salaries and other disbursements totaling $58 million. This means that the bureaucracy consumes a total of $153 million just for its own salaries, benefits and activities, or 71 percent of member’s dues payments.

In the documents there are 655 people listed as officers or employees of the Teamsters headquarters, placing the total average spending for each employee at $233,587. This does not include the additional income union officials may make from their locals, which can have assets of their own in the tens of millions.

It is not surprising then that the Teamsters have increased the number of people making $200,000 a year or more from 160 in 2023 to 213 in 2024. This “200k Club” is monitored by the message board T-Union Link, which publishes an annual list of officials making $200,000 or more in total. Among this list are 30 officials making more than $300,000 a year and three making more than $400,000 a year, including Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, who made $431,000 in 2024.

This level of income places the 200k Club members in the top 6 percent of American society. Figures like Sean O’Brien make enough to be in the top 1 percent of income earners.

O’Brien’s Teamsters United slate of candidates for 2026, backed by Teamsters for a Democratic Union, is full of 200k Club members.

• Fred Zuckerman, who is running for General Secretary Treasurer and who has caucused with the TDU, makes $391,327 a year.

• Juan Campos, running for general Vice President, makes $311,695.

• Matt Taibi, running for Eastern Region Vice President, makes $256,044.

• Thomas Gesuladi, also running for General Vice President, makes $456,638, second highest in the bureaucracy.

The list goes on, filled with long-time bureaucrats who make several times what a typical Teamster makes every year.

While these bureaucrats gorge themselves on members’ dues money, they allow thousands of Teamsters to lose their jobs. This includes the 22,000 workers at freight company Yellow who lost their jobs in 2023 when the company went under, and the continuing barrage of layoffs at UPS.

At UPS, warehouses have been closed all over the country. This includes the recent closure of the Swan Island hub In Portland, which has been hotbed of opposition. Over 200 workers will lose their jobs upon closure and another 700 will see their jobs threatened when the upgrades are complete.

These layoffs are sweeping across UPS, with the company firing 10,000 people in middle management in preparations for automating 200 locations, setting the stage for mass layoffs. The “Network of the Future” restructuring is using automation to destroy as much as 80 percent of inside jobs.

The treachery of the bureaucracy rooted both in social interests and history. Over the past 50 years the rapid globalization of the world economy has rendered the program of national reform untenable. To defend its social interests the bureaucracy has turned from class compromise to class collaboration, subordinating the unions to the interests of capitalism and turning deeper into support for nationalism and war.

Teamsters President Sean O’Brien is emerged as a top supporter of Trump since his speech at the Republican National Convention last year. He has given extensive support to Trump’s Labor Secretary pick, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, calling her the “only choice” in an interview with PBS. He has said that he speaks with Trump on the phone “three to four times a month” and praised Trump for “making certain that working people, especially union people, were taken care of.” O’Brien’s “union people” in the bureaucracy are certainly taken well care of.

He has also given public praise to fascist Republican Senator Josh Hawley’s rants against transgender people and foreign companies and has given tacit support for Trump’s trade war policies, joining other union leaders in promoting the illusion that tariffs will bring back manufacturing jobs to the US.

This is part of a broader shift, involving those hailed by the pseudo-left as “reform” candidates only a short time ago in the front rank. United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain has been very vocal in his support for the tariffs, falsely claiming that the tariffs will restore jobs in the auto industry while advertising the UAW’s services to the American state as a buttress for American war manufacturing, invoking the UAW’s role during the Second World War as the “arsenal of democracy.”

Both dockworker unions, the International Longshoreman Association (ILA) on the east coast and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union on the west coast, have thrown their support behind trade war policies which will cause the ports to grind to a halt and lead to mass layoffs spreading through the country and the world.

The union bureaucracy is not simply mistaken on Trump’s policies, they are making a conscious political decision to line up behind his policies for global trade war, and eventually imperialist war. They support the tariffs, not because they will bring back jobs (which they will not), but because they support the plans to consolidate economic forces in North America under US dominance in preparations for world imperialist war. The bureaucracy’s social interests are tied to the profitability of the national capitalist system and they see Trump’s policies as essential to defending and bolstering their social position.

More than 5,000 doctors strike in New Zealand

Tom Peters

About 5,500 doctors held a 24-hour nationwide strike in New Zealand on May 1 in protest against a pay offer of just 1.5 percent, spread over two years. This would be a major pay cut in real terms, with annual inflation at 2.6 percent for the year to March.

Striking doctors and supporters in Auckland [Photo: Mountain Tui/Facebook]

It was the first ever full-day strike by senior doctors in the country’s public hospitals, called by the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS). It follows strikes last year by thousands of junior doctors and by tens of thousands of nurses, and repeated strikes this year by medical laboratory workers.

The doctors’ strike coincided with strikes by 370 perioperative nurses at Auckland City Hospital, in protest over understaffing, and by nearly 1,000 home support workers employed by Access Community Health, who have received no pay increase for nearly two years. The unions involved—the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) and the Public Service Association (PSA)—limited these strikes to just two hours.

These actions reflect widespread opposition to the right-wing National Party-led coalition government’s intensifying assault on the public health system.

The day before the doctors’ strike, Health NZ confirmed that it has axed 540 jobs from its IT department, reducing its staffing by about a third. This will place further pressure on public hospitals’ antiquated computer systems.

Hospitals are being instructed to find hundreds of millions of dollars in cost savings and are leaving vacant positions unfilled. According to the ASMS, the vacancy rate for senior medical officers across the country is 12 percent, but in some areas it is more than 40 percent.

Health Minister Simeon Brown said he was “disappointed” with the strike. He cynically told the media that “an estimated 4,300 procedures such as hip operations, knee operations, cataract removals and critical specialist assessments would be delayed as a result of this strike.”

In fact, the austerity measures imposed by his government—and the previous Labour Party-led government—have produced the crisis of unmet need. According to Newsroom, “The waitlist for elective procedures sat at 76,677 at the end of September, with 30,173 waiting for more than four months and 2,159 waiting for more than a year.”

One News reported that 200,000 people are currently waiting to receive a specialist assessment, with long wait times often leading to serious harm. Doctor Allan Moffitt told the outlet: “I have a patient who had cancer and I could tell that it was a serious type of cancer. Her referral took over six months to be seen.”

Emergency departments are frequently filled above capacity, resulting in significant delays for urgent cases. Newsroom reports that data for 2024 shows ambulances “waited 35 minutes, on average, to hand patients over to hospitals.”

One doctor wrote in the r/newzealand Reddit forum that, for them, the strike was “about retaining colleagues so that work isn’t utter misery. We are haemorrhaging specialists at our hospital, and with each resignation, there’s more strain on those who stay.”

Striking Wellington physician Andrew Davies told Radio NZ the staffing crisis was the major issue: “We’ve got vacant jobs that we’re not allowed to advertise. It’s lies that they’re not getting rid of front-line staff.”

In response to the crisis, the government is outsourcing thousands of procedures to private hospitals, further undermining the public system and paving the way for privatisation.

More budget cuts are being prepared. Finance Minister Nicola Willis revealed on April 29 that in response to the deteriorating economic outlook—the US trade war targeting China could trigger a global recession—the government will slash new spending in this year’s budget from the previously announced $NZ2.4 billion to just $1.3 billion.

This will be the smallest spending increase in a decade. Treasury officials previously stated that $2.5 billion in new spending was the minimum required just to meet the growing cost of delivering services.

The opposition Labour Party’s criticism of the government’s cuts is thoroughly hypocritical. The previous Labour-led government oversaw a worsening crisis in the health system, including expanding waiting times for surgery and an effective wage freeze, which prompted strikes by nurses, midwives, doctors and other workers. Labour’s decision in 2022 to remove all restrictions on the spread of COVID-19 led to thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of hospitalisations, placing extraordinary pressure on hospitals.

Labour supports the government’s plan to double military spending from 1 to 2 percent of gross domestic product, which will be funded at the expense of health, education and other essential programs. The government has pledged an extra $12 billion for defence over four years to further integrate New Zealand into US-led imperialist war plans.

Workers also confront a trade union bureaucracy that is enforcing government cuts and preventing an effective, unified struggle against austerity. The various health unions have ensured that different sections of workers remain isolated from each other, with strikes limited to a day or less.

It has been more than five months since more than 30,000 nurses struck after rejecting a 1.5 percent pay offer, with the dispute still unresolved. The NZNO is seeking to wear down its members and persuade them to accept a sellout.

The PSA is demanding that even more money be spent on the military, while the union collaborates in imposing redundancies across multiple government departments.

The ASMS returned to negotiations with Health NZ the day after the doctors’ strike. The government agency has requested facilitated bargaining by the Employment Relations Authority.

The union’s Sarah Dalton signaled that the union leadership is backing away from its claim for a 12 percent pay increase. She told the New Zealand Herald: “It may not be that we achieve 12 percent, but if we can’t achieve better than what is on offer at the moment, we will not be able to settle this.”

Global explosion of military spending and the struggle against imperialist war

Jordan Shilton

Airmen with the 436th Aerial Port Squadron use a forklift to move 155 mm shells ultimately bound for Ukraine on April 20, 2022 at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware. [AP Photo/Alex Brandon]

The urgency of this perspective was underscored by the release this week of a report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), documenting a staggering $2.7 trillion in global military spending in 2024.

Over a third of global military spending was accounted for by American imperialism, with Washington spending $997 billion on war during 2024, the last year of the Biden administration. The figures also revealed dramatic increases in war budgets in Germany (to $88.5 billion) and Japan (to $55.3 billion), increases of 28 percent and 21 percent in a single year, respectively. Germany rose from the seventh-largest military spender in 2023 to the fourth-largest last year.

The US-led NATO alliance spent over $1.5 trillion, or 55 percent of the global total. This is 10 times more than the $149 billion allocated by Russia, which is being targeted by the imperialists for plunder in the ongoing war in Ukraine.

The surge in military spending has been relentless over the past decade, rising by over $1 trillion, from the $1.67 trillion total in 2015. But this is only a down payment. The imperialist powers have unveiled further huge increases to their war budgets with the aim of ensuring their share of the spoils in the new redivision of the world among the major powers.

US President Donald Trump’s 2026 budget proposal released Friday calls for a 13 percent increase for the Pentagon, to $1.01 trillion. To help fund this gargantuan sum, Trump plans to slash the education budget by 12 percent and impose massive cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), along with other critical social programs.

In Europe, Germany has committed €1 trillion ($1.13 trillion) to prepare for war: a €500 billion “special fund” to ensure social infrastructure—like roads, bridges and hospitals—is being readied for military use; and €500 billion to procure military equipment. The €500 billion for military equipment equals 11 percent of Germany’s GDP, more than the 8.6 percent of GDP that German war credits amounted to during the first year of World War I. Hitler only reached a comparable level of military spending in 1938, after his Nazi regime had been rearming feverishly for five years and just one year before the beginning of the Second World War.

The vast growth of military budgets promises handsome profits for arms manufacturers—the modern-day merchants of death—and the financial oligarchy. The top 100 global arms manufacturers recorded total sales of $632 billion in 2023, $317 billion of which were accounted for by US producers.

Germany’s Rheinmetall, which supplied the Nazi regime with weaponry during World War II, saw a staggering 36 percent growth in sales in 2024 and expects a further 25-30 percent growth this year. Rheinmetall suggests that an increase of military spending by the NATO powers to 3.5 percent of GDP—a goal endorsed by the German, French and British governments—would boost orders by “up to €400 billion” by 2030.

All of the imperialist powers claim their military expenditures are purely for defensive purposes, with budgets designated as “defense spending.” This is a grotesque lie. Whether in Washington, Berlin, London, Paris or Tokyo, the ruling elites are arming themselves to the teeth to advance their predatory economic and geostrategic interests by military means against their rivals and nominal “allies” in every corner of the world.

As for Russia and China, whose regimes desperately seek an accommodation with the imperialist powers, they deploy military sabre-rattling and reactionary nationalism to push for a deal with imperialism and defend their “right” to exploit the working class in their own countries.

The explosive growth in military spending over the past decade has gone hand in hand with the eruption of imperialist wars for control over raw materials, markets, pools of labour and spheres of influence around the world. In 2014, the US and Germany orchestrated a fascist-spearheaded coup in Kiev to topple the pro-Russian president and bring Ukraine directly under imperialist control, a process that provoked Moscow’s invasion in 2022 and the US-NATO war on Russia.

Ten years on, Washington, led by the fascist-minded Trump, is escalating conflicts on multiple fronts in what is rapidly developing into a Third World War. In addition to the ongoing war aimed at subjugating Ukraine, Russia and the entire Eurasian landmass to the interests of American capital, Washington is openly preparing for war with China in the Asia-Pacific to prevent its economic rise.

The latest SIPRI report explicitly pointed to the 2022 US National Defense Strategy as a driver for sharp military spending increases over recent years. That document described China as “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to U.S. national security” and was released just two weeks after the Biden administration’s National Security Strategy, which pledged to defeat Russia and China in the coming “decisive decade.”

In the Middle East, Washington’s determination to secure its unchallenged hegemony over the energy-rich region has led it to back Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. Washington and Berlin supplied tens of billions of dollars of weapons to the Zionist regime, allowing it to expand its bloody onslaught into Lebanon, where it killed and maimed tens of thousands, and launch strikes on Iran, the main regional target for US imperialism.

In just the first month of a savage bombing campaign against the Iranian-aligned Houthis in Yemen begun by Trump in March, the US has reportedly expended $1 billion in munitions and military resources.

The European imperialists increasingly view their former US ally as an adversary and have no intention of being sidelined by Washington in the struggle for global dominance. Recognizing that Trump’s “America first” foreign policy means the end of the transatlantic relationship that dominated the post-war period, the European powers are all stepping up rearmament drives so they can wage war independently of the United States.

This process will sharply exacerbate class conflict. Across the European Union, which recently pledged that its 27 member states would commit an additional €800 billion to war spending, some 93 million people, or 21 percent of the population, were living in poverty during 2024.

The financial oligarchies that dominate official political life in every imperialist country intend to impose the burden of militarism and war on the backs of the working class.

To this end, governments are gutting public spending and all social services and establishing dictatorial forms of rule to suppress popular opposition to imperialist war. The trade unions are whipping up the nationalist jingoism used by the ruling class to mobilise workers for war and enthusiastically promoting the conversion of civilian manufacturing into military production.

Trump’s announcement of further military spending increases has been accompanied by his relentless push to erect a presidential dictatorship in the US, lay off hundreds of thousands of federal workers and close entire government departments.

In Germany, the resurgence of military spending by over 80 percent in the past decade has taken place as levels of poverty and inequality have spiked. The ruling elite has systematically rehabilitated fascism in the form of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), and budgets for healthcare have been slashed to the bone.

Spain’s PSOE-Sumar government to impose unpopular €10 billion military spending hike by decree

Alejandro López

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez speaks with the media as he arrives for an EU Summit at the European Council building in Brussels, Thursday, March 6, 2025 [AP Photo/Omar Havana]

The Spanish government, a coalition of the social-democratic PSOE and the pseudo-left Sumar, led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, has announced a record €10.47 billion increase in military spending for 2025. The measure aims to meet NATO’s 2 percent of GDP target—first demanded by the Trump administration and fully upheld by Biden. “This plan will help us meet [the target] in record time,” Sánchez declared. “Spain will contribute to defending Europe.”

Sánchez plans to impose this increase by decree, bypassing the normal budgetary process out of fear that he lacks the parliamentary support to pass it through a full vote. This authoritarian manoeuvre underscores how militarism and war are inseparable from a drive to dictatorship at home.

This escalation is being implemented as workers face soaring inflation, rampant housing insecurity, and precarious employment. It is an act of class war. The bulk of the funds are earmarked for offensive military hardware: tactical radios, the MC3 command system, a spy satellite, an electronic warfare ship, modernisation of F-100 frigates, a new support ship, the FCAS future air combat system, tracked vehicles, and seven amphibious firefighting aircraft. This is not for domestic safety, but for war.

The plan also includes measures to boost the Ministry of the Interior’s cyber intelligence and critical infrastructure capacities, tools that will be used to suppress anti-war and anti-austerity opposition.

In a warmongering address, Sánchez justified the spending by invoking a Europe surrounded by war. “The enemies of Europe,” he said, “are not just using missiles… They’re using drones, cyberattacks, and AI to sabotage our supply chains and polarise society.” Sánchez was clearly referring to Ukraine.

This is the largest rearmament initiative in Spain’s modern history. It reveals the advanced state of European imperialist war preparations, which are not only directed at Russia and China, but also at the United States, as Washington intensifies its trade war tariffs against the EU.

The announcement elicited the usual pro-forma criticism from Sumar, PSOE’s junior coalition partner. Second Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz, Sumar’s de facto leader, condemned the plan as “a proposal born in the United States” and lamented the absence of “coordination at the European level.” She added, “Our model is a coordinated European defence project that does not involve increasing budgets.”

Díaz’s reference to the proposal’s US origins follows a recent visit by Spanish officials to Washington, where US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent demanded Spain boost military spending and scrap the digital services tax on U.S. tech giants. This came days after Sánchez visited Beijing, making him the first Western leader to do so since the US escalated its global trade war. In response, Bessent warned that aligning with China would be “like cutting their own throat.”

Sumar’s posturing is cynical. While decrying NATO’s “arms race,” it continues to rule alongside PSOE and implement NATO’s agenda. Díaz’s complaint is not about rearmament itself but the manner and origin of its orchestration. The real concern within Sumar and its Stalinist Communist Party (PCE) allies is the growing public opposition to war, not the war itself.

Enrique Santiago, PCE leader and Sumar coalition member, cynically claimed opposition to rearmament “not for personal or ethical reasons,” but because “the immense majority of society does not want to be complicit in genocides or rearmament.” He is not in principle opposed to imperialist militarism, but fears opposition to it on his left, from the working class. A November 2024 CIS poll found that only 14.2 percent supported increased military spending, while 50 percent demanded more health investment and 42 percent prioritised education.

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Podemos, now out of cabinet but still supporting the government in parliament, joined the charade. It denounced Sánchez for running a “government of rearmament and war.” Former Equality Minister in the PSOE-Podemos government (2020-2023) Irene Montero declared, “This is not what people voted for,” accusing PSOE of betrayal. Montero said the spending “will compromise people’s well-being” and “will lead to cuts,” making it impossible to continue “advancing feminist, anti-racist, social rights and security. That’s why it’s so important for people to take to the streets and mobilise to say, ‘No to war,’ ‘No to rearmament,’ and to strengthen the forces of peace,” she added in her statement.

Yet Podemos, like Sumar, is thoroughly complicit in the militarist agenda. Since 2020, it has backed every major military escalation, endorsed NATO’s war in Ukraine, and upheld arms sales to Israel. These parties have long served to provide a left cover for Spanish imperialism.

Speculation is mounting that the internal tensions may provoke a government crisis, potentially toppling Sánchez’s coalition. But even if PSOE falls, the militarist drive of the ruling class will not end. It would merely allow Sumar and Podemos to rebrand themselves as anti-war while continuing to advance a nationalist, militarised agenda from the opposition benches.

Podemos’ agitation against US imperialism is not anti-imperialist. It champions “European strategic autonomy,” a euphemism for creating a rival imperialist bloc. Its project divides the working class along national lines and severs solidarity with the millions in the US who are now protesting the fascistic policies of the Trump administration and the rule of the oligarchy. Rather than building international unity, Podemos sows divisions that bolster war and repression on both sides of the Atlantic.

This policy of “strategic autonomy” is aligned with the militarist ambitions of Europe’s capitalist class. It entails vast rearmament, the construction of a European military-industrial base, and proposals for a continental-wide nuclear deterrent. This is not an alternative to US domination, but another front in the deepening inter-imperialist conflict that twice plunged the world into global war.

The WSWS has consistently warned that Spain’s pseudo-left—Sumar, Podemos, the PCE—are not opponents of capitalism or war, but agents of imperialism. They speak for a privileged layer of the upper-middle class, fully integrated into the capitalist state, and are hostile to any independent mobilisation of the working class.

Their betrayal is most stark in Spain’s ongoing complicity in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. Despite public claims of suspending arms sales, the Sánchez government continues to procure Israeli military hardware “combat-tested” on Palestinians. The Civil Guard’s Economic Affairs Headquarters signed a contract for 15 million 9mm bullets, worth €6.6 million, with Guardian Defense & Homeland Security S.A., a subsidiary of an Israeli ammunition firm. The deal was discreetly published over the Easter holiday to avoid public backlash. Despite these efforts, the news became public and sparked widespread outrage. Yesterday, the Sánchez government was forced to rescind the contract, amid new revelations that Spain has awarded 46 contracts to the Israeli military industry worth over €1 billion since the start of the genocide in 2023.

The Guardia Civil is a paramilitary police force responsible for, among other things, maintaining public order. It operates with sweeping powers across rural areas and border regions and includes specialised units tasked with suppressing mass protests and strikes. That it sought to procure millions of bullets from an Israeli arms supplier, whose products are “combat-tested” on Palestinians, speaks volumes about the Spanish state’s preparations for internal repression amid mounting class tensions. Even if the bullets are now sourced from another supplier, the purpose remains the same: arming the repressive apparatus of the state against the working class.

The right-wing opposition Popular Party has made a show of demanding clarification, but it too supports rearmament. PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo declared that his party “supports the Armed Forces.”

The PSOE–Sumar government’s war preparations mirrors developments across Europe. Nominally “centre-left” parties such as Scholz’s SPD in Germany and the Labour Party in Britain have been the chief parties in preparations for war and militarism. Billions are being funneled into the military while public services are gutted and democratic rights are suppressed.

Massive blackout paralyses Spain and Portugal

Alejandro López & Alex Lantier

People wait outside a closed train station, during a major power outage in Barcelona, Spain, Monday, April 28, 2025. [AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti]

A massive blackout on Monday brought Spain and Portugal to a virtual standstill, affecting tens of millions across the Iberian Peninsula. Subway networks, hospitals, airports, traffic lights, ATMs and telecommunications systems collapsed in scenes that brought a 21st-century population back to 19th-century conditions.

The outage, which began shortly after midday, left major cities like Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon, Seville and Valencia paralysed. It also led to smaller blackouts and internet outages in parts of Morocco and southern France. As of nightfall yesterday, electricity grid operators had reportedly only been able to reestablish service for 20 percent of the population in Spain, and 10 percent in Portugal.

Social and economic life ground to a halt across the Iberian peninsula. Water mains and cell phones ceased functioning across much of the peninsula. Traffic collapsed into gridlock as non-functioning traffic lights turned roadways into death traps. In Madrid, Mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida ordered the closure of the four main tunnels of the M-30 ring road. Adif, Spain’s state rail operator, suspended all services “until further notice” after trains and subways stopped, leaving masses of people trapped, many underground, in the dark.

Spanish Transport Minister Oscar Puente said the “main priority” was rescuing those trapped in trains, and that train stations would remain open “to help the lives of people who had to take the train and have no other choice than to spend the night there.”

Emergency services had to mount numerous operations to rescue people trapped in elevators that also suddenly stopped amid the blackout. In hospitals, only backup generators prevented disaster. Non-urgent interventions were suspended, and medical staff scrambled to maintain critical surgeries, life-support systems and patients relying on oxygen machines, who cannot survive long without electricity.

Industry and commerce collapsed. Shops and supermarkets were forced to close or operate cash-only as card payments and ATMs failed. In Terrassa, near Barcelona, shops selling generators were stripped bare by desperate residents. Across Spain and Portugal, industrial giants including Seat, Ford, Repsol and ArcelorMittal suspended operations—an economic shock compounded by widespread retail closures and disrupted supply chains already affected by Washington’s trade war tariffs.

Airports in Madrid, Barcelona, and Lisbon were plunged into chaos, operating on emergency generators as flights were delayed or cancelled. TAP Air Portugal instructed passengers not to come to the airport. Dutch tourist Marc Brandsma, stranded in Lisbon, told the Associated Press: “We haven’t seen any plane arriving or departing in the 50 minutes we’ve been waiting here.”

In the meantime, electricity companies are scrambling to reestablish service. Spain’s Nuclear Safety Council stated around 5 p.m. yesterday that Spain’s seven nuclear reactors were not in danger of overheating, despite the cutoff of electricity. Three reactors were offline, and the remaining four were automatically disconnected from the grid; emergency generators switched on to ensure the continued functioning of essential cooling and maintenance systems.

France’s Electricity Transport Network (RTE) said it was working with its Spanish and Portuguese counterparts to transmit first 750MW and then 900MW of electricity into the Iberian peninsula. This will facilitate restarting production, as plants across the peninsula are brought back online gradually, to avoid overloading connections inside Spain and Portugal.

Both the Spanish and Portuguese cabinets convened emergency sessions as they scrambled to contain the fallout. Amid unsubstantiated rumors of a Russian cyberattack that could have caused the outage, Spain’s intelligence services, including the National Centre of Cryptology and National Centre of Intelligence, launched an investigation into a possible cyberattack. There were also reports of a fire in southern France that could have taken out key electricity distribution interchanges with Spain.

As of this writing, however, Spanish and Portuguese authorities have said there was no evidence of a cyberattack. Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said there was “no indication” of foreign interference, in a speech in which he announced a state of emergency to allow for the state to send available electricity to the most vital consumers, such as hospitals.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced that the Spanish government had assumed direct management of the blackout response in three regions: Andalusia, Extremadura and Madrid. Speaking from his official residence at La Moncloa, Sánchez warned: “We still do not have conclusive information about the causes of this outage, so I ask citizens to get their information through official channels. It is better not to speculate, we do not rule out any hypothesis.”

He urged Spanish people not to go out in their vehicles and to limit their use of electrical devices, adding: “We must focus on restoring the supply of electricity.”

While it is too early to determine with certainty what caused the blackout, initial analyses of the electrical grid suggest that the blackout had natural causes that interacted with a broader failure to make sufficient investments in the grid.

Portugal’s National Electricity Network (REN) issued a statement declaring: “Due to extreme temperature variations in the interior of Spain, there were anomalous oscillations in the very high voltage lines (400 kV), a phenomenon known as ‘induced atmospheric vibration’. These oscillations caused synchronisation failures between the electrical systems, leading to successive disturbances across the interconnected European network.”

Georg Zachmann, a senior fellow at the Bruegel think tank in Brussels, told the Guardian that this led the grid frequency to fall below the European standard of 50Hz, with “cascading disconnections of power plants.” He added that putting more renewables like solar and wind plants onto the grid, with more intermittent and unpredictable power output, requires more investment to ensure that this intermittency does not disrupt the grid frequency: “You cannot ignore it. You need the tools to keep the system running.”

The blackout has exposed the fragility of Spain and Portugal’s privatised electricity infrastructure. There have been warnings since the beginning of the year that Spain’s energy grid was suffering chronic vulnerabilities created by decades of deregulation and the chaotic expansion of renewables without investment in stabilising infrastructure. As El Economista explained earlier this year, Red Eléctrica had long been struggling with “elevated voltage oscillations” due to the combination of falling energy demand and the massive integration of renewable energy.

The situation became critical enough that the National Commission for Markets and Competition (CNMC) warned in January, “The system is losing margin for action in exceptional situations, with voltage levels reaching or even surpassing regulatory limits at certain points.” Indeed, a recent electrical incident in Madrid, where control problems disabled one of the most important train stations in the country, Chamartín, prefigured Monday’s national-scale collapse.

These blackouts expose the failures of capitalist electricity policies in Europe, which prioritise market deregulation and “green” investment profits over system resilience and public safety.

Tanzania’s CCM government suppresses the main opposition CHADEMA

Alejandro López

Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan and the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (Party of the Revolution—CCM) are intensifying their repression of the main opposition party, CHADEMA (Party for Democracy and Progress).

CCM, one of the longest-ruling parties in Africa, traces its roots to Julius Nyerere’s Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), the bourgeois nationalist movement that led the country to independence from Britain in 1961 and governed under a one-party system for decades.

President of Tanzania Samia Suluhu Hassan [Photo by Scottish Government / CC BY 2.0]

On April 9, 2025, opposition leader Tundu Lissu, CHADEMA chairman and presidential contender in the upcoming October elections, was arrested after addressing a rally in Mbinga district. Lissu had been leading a nationwide campaign under the slogan “No Reforms, No Election,” demanding changes to the electoral process. He was charged with treason, a capital offense carrying the death penalty, for inciting rebellion and calling for election disruption.

Days later, Lissu was disqualified from contesting the 2025 general elections and CHADEMA was banned from participating in elections until 2030, citing its refusal to sign a code of conduct. At a sham court appearance in Dar es Salaam, Lissu was barred from entering a plea on the treason charge but pleaded not guilty to a separate accusation of publishing false information. Two senior party officials, Deputy Chairperson John Heche and Secretary General John Mnyika, were arrested en route to the hearing and released the following day. At least one party member was reportedly killed by police outside the courtroom, while dozens more were detained as police in full riot gear violently cracked down on protests.

Tundu Lissu addressing the parliament of Tanzania in Dodoma in 2017 [Photo by Likumbage / CC BY-SA 4.0]

Last September, a senior CHADEMA official was abducted and brutally murdered amid a wave of abductions targeting government critics. During the November 2024 local elections, CHADEMA reported that thousands of its candidates were barred from standing, as the ruling party claimed 98 percent of the seats.

Mounting repression and attacks on democratic rights in Tanzania is part of a broader authoritarian turn across East Africa and globally. In Uganda, the regime of Yoweri Museveni denied bail to opposition leader and four-time presidential candidate Kizza Besigye on fraudulent treason charges, after kidnapping him in Kenya and transferring him to Kampala for a military trial. In neighbouring Mozambique, FRELIMO has overseen the violent suppression of protests against its half-century rule, leaving over 350 dead. In Kenya, President William Ruto continues to escalate repression following the brutal suppression of protests against IMF-backed austerity measures that left over 60 dead and hundreds injured. Abductions and extrajudicial detentions of protestors have become routine, openly supported by the military and endorsed by the trade union bureaucracy. Even children’s school plays have been targeted.

These developments reflect the global resurgence of authoritarian rule, driven by the intensifying crisis of capitalism and accelerated by the attempts of Donald Trump administration to impose a dictatorship in the United States with attacks on migrants, anti-genocide protesters, and even sections of the judiciary. Across the globe, ruling elites are responding to deepening inequality and mass opposition with repression, censorship, and militarisation.

In Tanzania, repression unfolds against a backdrop of worsening social conditions for the working class and rural masses. Despite boasting annual GDP growth of over 5 percent, fuelled by foreign investment in mining, energy, and infrastructure, the majority of Tanzanians remain mired in poverty. The country is rich in natural resources vital to the global economy: it is one of Africa’s top gold producers, has significant offshore natural gas reserves at Songo Songo and Mnazi Bay, and boasts rare minerals like tanzanite, alongside substantial deposits of diamonds, nickel, coal, and uranium. Fertile agricultural land supports exports of coffee, cashew nuts, and cotton.

Regions of Tanzania [Photo by TUBS/GNU Free Documentation License / CC BY-SA 3.0]

Yet, 43 percent of Tanzanians still live below the international poverty line of $2.15 per day. Over 65 percent of the population is employed in agriculture, overwhelmingly in informal or subsistence conditions. Meanwhile, the working class, concentrated in the service, mining, and construction sectors, faces chronic underemployment, low wages, and precarious conditions.

The richest strata grow ever wealthier. Mohammed Dewji, CEO of Mohammed Enterprises Tanzania Limited—a conglomerate operating across 11 countries—has amassed a net worth of $2.2 billion, equivalent to about 3 percent of Tanzania’s GDP. Rostam Aziz, with interests spanning telecommunications, energy, and mining, has a net worth of $700 million, while Said Salim Bakhresa, founder of the Bakhresa Group, holds $400 million.

Foreign investors, particularly in the mining and tourism sectors, extract billions of dollars in profits annually, while the Tanzanian state receives a pittance in royalty fees. These crumbs are bitterly fought over by rival factions within CCM, whose internal battles revolve around control of rent-seeking and bribe-taking schemes connected to mining and government contracts.

Tanzania’s trade unions, grouped under the 320,000 strong Trade Union Congress of Tanzania (TUCTA), are entirely subordinated to the state. Nominally representing workers in various sectors, from education and health to mining and communications, they ensure that labour struggles are episodic while strikes are routinely criminalised.

CHADEMA has become the vehicle through which many workers, sections of the middle class and youth have sought to express their opposition to the CCM. It has performed well in elections, particularly in urban areas such as Arusha, Kilimanjaro, Mbeya, Mwanza, and Dar es Salaam. In January 2025, Lissu was elected chairman of Chadema, beating the incumbent Freeman Mbowe who favoured a more moderate line towards the government.

A lawyer by training, Lissu entered parliament in 2010 and ran for president in 2020. He was shot 16 times in a 2017 attack most likely orchestrated by the government. After losing the 2020 election to John Magufuli, who had served as Tanzania’s president from 2015 until his death in 2021, Lissu fled the country to Belgium. He returned in 2023, amid speculation that Magufuli successor, the current President Samia Suluhu Hassan was moving to relax restrictions on the opposition and the media.

But CHADEMA represents a faction of the elite that complains of being excluded from power and wealth under the TANU/CCM rule. Founded in 1992 during the transition to multi-party democracy, CHADEMA’s leaderships consist of many former CCM politicians and government officials. One of the most prominent is Edward Lowassa, a former prime minister and high-ranking CCM member, who defected to CHADEMA in 2015 after failing to secure CCM’s presidential nomination. His move brought a significant number of former CCM members into CHADEMA’s ranks.

CHADEMA is a pro-business party. Its 2023 election manifesto called for measures like a reduction of corporate tax from 25 percent to between 15 and 20 percent. On mining, oil, and gas, the party called for a “conducive environment for investors.” Its proposed reforms include privatizing the energy sector and making state-owned enterprises more “efficient”, a code word for privatization.

Across East Africa, similar bourgeois opposition movements have already exposed their bankruptcy. In Kenya, the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) of billionaire Raila Odinga, long trading on calling protests for “more democracy” and “anti-corruption” has integrated into Ruto’s corrupt and brutal regime, as it intensifies repression against workers and youth opposing IMF-backed austerity.

The same fate awaits those who place any confidence in CHADEMA or other capitalist parties in Tanzania. Their function is to channel mass discontent back into the safe confines of capitalist rule, preserve the profits of foreign investors, and maintain the subordination of Tanzania to imperialism.

It is sixty years since the launch of Ujamaa, the so-called “African socialism” championed by Julius Nyerere and the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU). Workers and youth must reject the dangerous illusions that Ujamaa represents a model to which they can return.

Nyerere’s African socialism had nothing to do with socialism. It was a nationalist project, utterly dependent on Western aid and designed to prevent a genuine social revolution. Far from challenging imperialist domination, Nyerere became a favoured ally of the World Bank, securing aid to maintain a limited system of patronage that enriched a narrow elite while leaving the masses impoverished.

When Cold War priorities shifted in the 1980s and aid dried up, Nyerere and his successors in the CCM capitulated without resistance to World Bank and IMF diktats, initiating decades of privatisation, deregulation, and the deepening the poverty of the working class and rural masses.