USA/Canada

Boris Johnson and most other candidates want to have Britain out by 31 October, even if that means a no-deal Brexit and a new hard border in Ireland. Dominic Raab says he might “prorogue” Parliament — send the MPs home — to prevent MPs stopping no-deal. Michael Gove says he might consider a “short” delay, but that would be to finalise a supposed “alternative to the Irish backstop” which May’s efforts over many months have shown to be illusory.

On 7 June, a lesbian pride march in Washington DC, the “DC Dyke March” banned marchers who had Stars of David on their rainbow flags. The organisers said that anti-Zionist Jews were welcome, and that they banned flags with Stars of David because they wanted to exclude all “nationalist” symbols.

Lots of people are nationalists of different shades. Why should they be banned from lesbian pride marches? And Palestinian flags weren’t banned. A similar ban was imposed at a pride march in Chicago in 2017. Root-and-branch anti-Israel politics inevitably spills over into antisemitism.

On 3 and 4 June, Workers’ Liberty and Solidarity people joined thousands in London protesting against Donald Trump’s state visit. On 4 June we were part of an “against Trump, against Brexit” contingent, with Labour for a Socialist Europe and Another Europe is Possible.

The veteran Marxist writer Paul Le Blanc has written the most substantial and critical account yet of the collapse of the USA’s International Socialist Organization, of which Le Blanc was himself a member, though not a central one.

More and more journalists and politicians in the USA are calling for the Democrats in the House of Representatives to start impeachment proceedings against president Donald Trump.

As Congress went into recess on 23 May (it reconvenes on 4 June), Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Reps, said she didn't want to start on impeachment.

But she did declare Trump incompetent by calling on his "family and staff" to stage an "intervention" to assess his psychological "well-being" - "for the good of the country".

North Carolina’s 12th District was said to be the most gerrymandered in America. Until 2017 it was a long, straggling, narrow strip, at points extremely narrow. One critic quipped that a two hour drive down its length with both car doors open would endanger the lives of most people in the district.

Sergei Mikailov was in for a nasty shock at his works meeting in Moscow in December 2016.

Proceedings started when a bag was placed over his head and he was unceremoniously frog marched out of the room. This was the Lubyanka, and the FSB was cleaning house.

Loose tongues had been wagging about Russian interference in the US Presidential election. Mikhailov, deputy head of the FSB’s cyber security arm, soon found himself facing a secret trial which landed him with 22 years in prison for “treason”.

Three other servants of Putin’s secret state met similar fates.

On 19 April, the International Socialist Organization (ISO), previously the largest far-left group in the US, announced it had completed the process of winding itself up.

The decision to dissolve came in the wake of a major controversy over the ISO Steering Committee’s mishandling of a sexual assault allegation in 2013. The row began on 15 March with the publication of a letter from the new ISO Steering Committee elected at the organisation’s national conference in late February.

After Britain and its Allies had won the war, proclaiming themselves champions of freedom and democracy, the people of its imperial possessions stepped up their democratic demand for some of that freedom for themselves.

India

In its largest colony, India, Britain imposed the Rowlatt Act, extending wartime powers of indefinite imprisonment without trial. It prompted anger and rebellion, against both the Act and continuing British rule.