Tribune – Comment, news and reviews from Britain's democratic left

It was an early and unwritten rule in “new” Labour’s cultural policy that nothing was to be called a “museum” any more. The word was too fusty and reminiscent of cobwebs. In Tony Blair’s “new” Britain, such things became an “experience”. Remember the Millennium Dome and its “Euan test”? In other words, Blair’s son would have to love it. Exhibits had to be interactive, with buttons for kids in order to uncover information in a process that educationalists term “situated cognition”.

Could the Pentagon’s next target be Rochdale, that well-known stronghold of co-operative extremism? Chris Proctor investigates…

A shift has taken place. First, people who applauded railway privatisation realised it just meant you paid more for a confusing range of tickets, all propped up by continued taxpayer subsidy. Then City boys – born bankers and the ultimate free-marketeers – suddenly begged the public to bail them out. Now media owners, from those who denounce the nanny state to those who would never previously countenance any public subsidy lest it undermine their independence, are out with the begging bowls.

When Gordon Brown produced his mildly amusing description of David Cameron’s tax policy – that it must have been dreamed up on the playing fields of Eton – Fleet Street’s finest reacted like a roomful of old ladies who have just seen a mouse. They climbed onto their chairs, hauled up their skirts, and shrieked in unison: “Class war! He’s restarted the class war!”

As the Chilcot inquiry deliberates, we republish Chris McLaughlin’s conclusion that Tony Blair knew WMDs did not exist, written in 2004

The Prime Minister’s attack on privileged and out-of-touch Tories is paying dividends, says Ian Hernon

Scrapping nuclear weapons is a far more practical option than many British politicians would have us believe, says Bruce Kent