After decades of decline, British capitalism is particularly vulnerable to the instability that Trump and his ‘America First’ programme bring. The new president will inflame the political turmoil, radicalisation, and polarisation taking place in Britain.

120 years ago, on a cold Sunday in 1905, tens of thousands of unarmed St. Petersburg workers marched to the Tsar’s Winter Palace to deliver a petition. When they arrived, tsarist soldiers fired into the crowd, killing hundreds and wounding thousands.

Shocking revelations have recently come to light surrounding the more than decade-long persecution of Julian Assange. A British judge, Penrose Foss, has ruled that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) must explain why it deleted a series of emails between itself and the Swedish legal authorities about the attempt to extradite Assange.

On Monday morning while I was having breakfast it occurred to me to check what the Spanish press was saying about Barça's victory in the Super Cup. I almost choked on my sloe jam on toast when a strident El Paíseditorial jumped out of the screen. “Europe must react” the headline shouted, almost hysterically. Alarmed, I began to read the opinion of this authorized mouthpiece of the Spanish ruling class. Where did this panic come from and what was the response that El País demanded?

Ever since the right-wing Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) took the most votes in the election last September, a number of the establishment parties have been desperately seeking to form a coalition government to prevent its coming to power. But despite their best efforts, the coalition negotiations between the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP), the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) and the New Austria and Liberal Forum (NEOS) have failed.

The European economy is facing its biggest crisis in a decade. Over the past few months, announcements of layoffs in France and Germany have come thick and fast. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are at risk as companies attempt to cut costs. At the same time, the European Central Bank (ECB) is cutting interest rates and its growth forecast. This reflects the historic crisis of European capitalism, which offers nothing but a future of austerity and misery.

If you thought that 2024 was disturbed, it will be seen as nothing compared to what we are about to experience in 2025.

Denmark is one of the only countries in the world that still has a colony, Greenland, which has suffered under the brutal oppression of Danish colonialism for over 300 years. Control of Greenland is the only thing that keeps Danish capitalism relevant on the international stage, and the Danish bourgeoisie is desperately trying to cling to it.

In November, a concrete canopy collapsed at the newly inaugurated train station in Novi Sad, killing 15. Since then, a huge protest movement has swept the country, condemning the criminal negligence of the authorities which led to this tragedy. This movement has continued to escalate, with a series of student occupations and calls for a general strike.

Defined by political crises all over the world, spiralling tensions between the imperialist powers, and revolutions in Bangladesh and Kenya, 2024 was an historic year in the crisis of the capitalist system. But now, with Trump days away from power, Ukraine headed unavoidably towards a humiliating and bloody defeat, and with no end in sight to the complete destabilisation of the Middle East, this new year looks to be even more explosive.

For three years, Germany’s ruling ‘traffic light’ coalition of Greens, Social Democrats (SPD) and Liberals (FDP) was under repair. Now it has finally been taken off the grid: the costs are too high, and the benefits are non-existent. The capitalist class threw it in the electoral recycling bin. Soon we will have to welcome a new selection of well-known crooks into office. The spectacle of so-called democracy continues uninterrupted, though it is hardly flawless and certainly not convincing.

On 6 December, Romania’s Constitutional Court decided to cancel the first round of the country’s presidential election in an attempt to prevent right-wing demagogue Călin Georgescu from winning the country’s top office. The decision was cheered by the European Union and liberals. Apparently, Romanians cannot be trusted to vote for the ‘right’ candidate.

A growing layer of people, especially among the youth, are looking for radical answers to the crises that plague our lives. The founding conference of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RKP) in Germany is living proof of this. From 30 November to 1 December, 260 comrades and visitors from across Germany met to launch the RKP and discuss its perspectives and tasks. 

On the weekend of 30 November, 122 communists from 23 Swedish cities – and a delegation from Finland – gathered for ‘Communism & Revolution’, a weekend of Marxist education designed to arm revolutionaries with the ideas they need to build a party that can smash capitalism.

The collapse of the concrete canopy at the train station in Novi Sad on 1 November, in which 15 people were killed, was the straw that broke the camel’s back for many in Serbia. Among the victims, a large number of them young people and children, two are still in critical condition.