This week’s news has been dominated by bellicose rhetoric towards Russia from the Tories and Blairites. But the hysteria belies the fact that Britain’s position on the world stage has been seriously diminished.
Alan Woods, editor of In Defence of Marxism, discusses the latest spy thriller: the attempted assassination of an MI6 double agent, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter in Salisbury, England.
The Tories are blaming the Kremlin. But what – or who – really lies behind this story?
Alan argues that there is something suspiciously theatrical about the use of nerve gas (a ‘Cold War relic’) to bump off an ex-spy.
Maintaining a sense of Cold War tension is certainly in the interests of the British ruling class, who are desperate to maintain the illusion that Britain is still a world power.