A s a few low murmurs broke out in a respectfully reflective House of Commons chamber after its historic vote on assisted dying in England and Wales, one figure in the public gallery had a special interest in the result. Back in 2015, Rob Marris, the former Labour MP for Wolverhampton South West, had tabled the previous attempt to pass a bill changing the law. It was comprehensively defeated. On Friday, he returned to the Commons for the first time since departing as an MP in 2017. The bill being discussed was remarkably similar to the one he had presented nine years earlier, but he and other advocates for assisted dying desperately hoped that sentiment among MPs had shifted. As the debate progressed and a series of MPs gave thoughtful and heartfelt speeches against any change in the law, Marris feared the opportunity would again be lost for another decade. So when the vote’s result arrived after five hours of dignified but impassioned discussion, it came as a surprise. “People who I expected to support the bill were not doing so in their speeches,” he said, moments after leaving the chamber. “I thought that maybe the tide was not with us. But there is still a long way to go on this bill.” He and other MPs who were present for the last vote on the issue noticed a satisfying symmetry after Friday’s vote. In 2015, 330 MPs voted against assisted dying for terminally ill people. Last week, 330 voted in favour of the bill presented by Labour backbencher Kim Leadbeater . That reversal was taken by some MPs as a neat reflection of a debate that had reached a tipping point. Yet just as Marris warned, others supportive of the idea now say that the hard work must continue to hold on to wavering MPs. For those in favour of change, the vote was a moment in which parliament finally reflected the long-held views of the public. Polls have regularly shown a majority in favour of assisted dying. The latest Opinium poll for the Observer found that almost two-thirds (64%) support making it legal for someone to seek assisted dying, while a fifth (19%) are opposed. But the current campaign to hand the right of assisted dying to terminally ill people with six months left to live gained serious traction over the past year. It began last December, with interventions from two public figures from outside Westminster. First, the Observer revealed that actor Diana Rigg had made an impassioned case to legalise assisted dying in a message recorded shortly before her “truly awful” and “dehumanising” death from cancer in 2020. Just days later, television presenter Esther Rantzen, who has lung cancer, revealed she had joined the Dignitas assisted dying clinic in Switzerland . Backing a change in England and Wales, she said there should be a choice over “how you want to go and when you want to go”. Meanwhile, former health secretaries Stephen Dorrell and Alan Milburn said they were backing a change. Crucially, Labour confirmed that, should it win power, it would make time and expert advice available for an assisted dying bill if MPs backed it in a free House of Commons vote. Keir Starmer had backed Marris’s bill back in 2015 and remains supportive of a new law. Momentum built in July, when Charles Falconer, who was lord chancellor in Tony Blair’s government and had first adopted the issue of assisted dying in 2013, introduced a private members’ bill to the House of Lords . But he and other campaigners knew that it was a vote in the Commons that was really needed to have any real prospect of success. By the autumn, the issue had become a regular public debating point. Yet it is a quirk of Westminster’s obscure traditions that when the opportunity for this sea change in social policy arose, it came not through public pressure, but via a small ball printed with the number 238. The ball – one of 458 in a bowl – was picked out at random in mid-September as part of the raffle to decide which MPs would have the chance to present their own private members’ bills. Leadbeater’s came out on top. Tory MP Nusrat Ghani, who had the task of picking out the balls, reacted with unerring prescience. “Well done to Kim,” she said. “You are No 1 and you’ll be, gosh, very busy indeed.” When it came, it was a vote that divided the closest of fellow travellers. Leftwing flag bearers John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn found themselves entering different division lobbies – one of the rarest of political occasions. Sign up to Observed Analysis and opinion on the week's news and culture brought to you by the best Observer writers after newsletter promotion McDonnell had recently reached the decision that he was ready to vote in favour of giving people more choice over how they die, while Corbyn continued to worry about safeguards. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage voted against the bill, but his deputy and former Reform UK leader, Richard Tice, voted in favour. Parties split, the cabinet split – and even families found themselves divided. Danny Kruger, a leading opponent of what he described as “assisted suicide”, is at odds with his mother, the television presenter Prue Leith. Yet the only real political fallout has been some anger aimed at Wes Streeting, the health secretary, who spoke out against the bill . Ministers had been advised to stay out of the public debate . While Streeting has talked openly of his fears about a “chilling slippery slope”, some in the party believe he sees it as a significant distraction from his huge task of reforming the NHS to bring down waiting times. But overall, there was broad agreement that last week’s considered debate showed parliament at its best. “I kept saying to colleagues that it would be a day where parliament shows itself in that way,” said one cabinet minister. “It nearly always does that at these moments. I knew there’d be no shenanigans.” Friday’s passing of the second reading of the bill is in itself a historic moment but, as Marris and others have said, obstacles remain before it becomes law, and the hard work for Leadbeater and other leading advocates still lies ahead. All sides of the debate now agree that proper time should be given to the bill to ensure that expert evidence is given, impact assessments are carried out and it is improved line by line where necessary. That will mean it will be studied and scrutinised by a cross-party committee for months, before re-emerging in parliament in about April. The 55-strong majority returned in the vote is seemingly robust in normal parliamentary terms, but the bill’s passage into law cannot yet be guaranteed. Some MPs backed the bill in order to continue the debate and are awaiting reassurances before voting it into law. Among them is former Brexit secretary David Davis , though the Observer has heard from other MPs in the same position. There are also the 31 MPs who did not record a vote, who could yet be crucial. More granular debates lie ahead. Looking back on Friday’s events, however, some of those involved in the assisted dying debate for years reflected on the fact that even with so many new MPs in parliament, almost all of them opted to grapple with the issue and take a view. “If that is the template for this parliament, it’s going to be a very, very impressive parliament,” said Lord Falconer. “Whatever else happens in this parliament, it will be remembered for this incredibly historic change.”Sports on TV for Thursday, Dec. 26TSS Inc.'s CEO Darryll Dewan sells $1.51 million in stock

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Marxist theory is expansive and essential “All science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided,” said Karl Marx. If our experience of the world matched reality, we would have no need for theory. Thousands of years ago the consensus was that the earth was flat. But science exposed that belief as false, contradicting experience. Under capitalism, we know what it feels like to be low paid , to desperately want somewhere secure to live and to search for meaningful relationships. But to expose why that is the case, we need to understand the inner workings of capitalism. We need Marxist theory. Opponents of socialism create the impression that Marxism is dogmatic and outdated. Some people have ideas and explanations about society which they think of as “common sense”—bosses create jobs, competition from migrants lowers wages, the police keep society in order and so on. Social and mainstream media fill our minds with partial and misleading explanations for why society is in crisis and who is to blame. The far right puts forward supposedly coherent explanations of social crisis which express people’s anger against elites, but points them in entirely the wrong direction for solutions. Marxism can cut through these false explanations. What we see and experience only partially expose the truth about the hidden processes that drive those appearances. Marx pointed out that the movements of the stars are not perceptible to those looking up at night. Objects can behave in misleading ways. Their real nature must be investigated. Scientific theory helps to get beneath the surface appearance of things to understand the underlying laws and processes that shape the world. But the ruling class needs science to develop new technologies and make more profits. The ruling class also uses ideology in sophisticated ways to obscure or justify the inequalities and violence of capitalism. Marx argued that capitalism is especially good at disguising its true nature. Our societies are shaped by hidden forces that need to be explored. Marx unmasked the economists of his time. “In place of disinterested inquirers”, he argued, “there were hired prize fighters, in place of genuine scientific research, the bad conscience and the evil intent of apologetics”. The existence of these ideological prize fighters makes Marxist theory more important. When Marx wrote Capital, he did not tell people that their lives were hard and their wages low. They knew that from their experience. What Marx wanted to know was why—and what could be done about it. He studied the inner workings of capitalism. His method enables us to look beneath the dynamism of capitalism to see how wealth is based on labour and would inevitably create crises. Marx used what he called the “power of abstraction”. This abstraction means setting aside the superficial aspects of something and looking at its most essential features. The abstractions must then be related back to what we actually see and experience in the real world. So we move from the abstract idea to the concrete reality—how something works in reality rather than how it appears, in the abstract, to function. We can grasp the fundamental nature of things by abstracting and separating out the core elements and then reconstructing the whole as a new, complex totality. In Capital, Marx investigated the commodity—how objects were produced, bought and sold. He revealed the hidden exploitation, alienation and competition involved in their production. Superficial explanations of society can fit when workers are passive. Right wing ideas can gain a purchase when workers are angry. But workers have an interest in understanding how society really works. The experience of previous struggles combines with theoretical insights in Marxism. The combination of struggle and politics reveals the oppressive logic of capitalism and how to transform it. A new series of articles on Marxist ideas

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By MICHELLE L. PRICE and ROB GILLIES NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump’s recent dinner with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his visit to Paris for the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral were not just exercises in policy and diplomacy. They were also prime trolling opportunities for Trump. Related Articles National Politics | Trump names Andrew Ferguson as head of Federal Trade Commission to replace Lina Khan National Politics | Biden issues veto threat on bill expanding federal judiciary as partisan split emerges National Politics | Trump lawyers and aide hit with 10 additional felony charges in Wisconsin over 2020 fake electors National Politics | After withdrawing as attorney general nominee, Matt Gaetz lands a talk show on OANN television National Politics | What will happen to Social Security under Trump’s tax plan? Throughout his first term in the White House and during his campaign to return, Trump has spun out countless provocative, antagonizing and mocking statements. There were his belittling nicknames for political opponents, his impressions of other political figures and the plentiful memes he shared on social media. Now that’s he’s preparing to return to the Oval Office, Trump is back at it, and his trolling is attracting more attention — and eyerolls. On Sunday, Trump turned a photo of himself seated near a smiling first lady Jill Biden at the Notre Dame ceremony into a social media promo for his new perfume and cologne line, with the tag line, “A fragrance your enemies can’t resist!” The first lady’s office declined to comment. When Trudeau hastily flew to Florida to meet with Trump last month over the president-elect’s threat to impose a 25% tax on all Canadian products entering the U.S., the Republican tossed out the idea that Canada become the 51st U.S. state. The Canadians passed off the comment as a joke, but Trump has continued to play up the dig, including in a post Tuesday morning on his social media network referring to the prime minister as “Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada.” After decades as an entertainer and tabloid fixture, Trump has a flair for the provocative that is aimed at attracting attention and, in his most recent incarnation as a politician, mobilizing fans. He has long relished poking at his opponents, both to demean and minimize them and to delight supporters who share his irreverent comments and posts widely online and cheer for them in person. Trump, to the joy of his fans, first publicly needled Canada on his social media network a week ago when he posted an AI-generated image that showed him standing on a mountain with a Canadian flag next to him and the caption “Oh Canada!” After his latest post, Canadian Immigration Minister Marc Miller said Tuesday: “It sounds like we’re living in a episode of South Park.” Trudeau said earlier this week that when it comes to Trump, “his approach will often be to challenge people, to destabilize a negotiating partner, to offer uncertainty and even sometimes a bit of chaos into the well established hallways of democracies and institutions and one of the most important things for us to do is not to freak out, not to panic.” Even Thanksgiving dinner isn’t a trolling-free zone for Trump’s adversaries. On Thanksgiving Day, Trump posted a movie clip from “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” with President Joe Biden and other Democrats’ faces superimposed on the characters in a spoof of the turkey-carving scene. The video shows Trump appearing to explode out of the turkey in a swirl of purple sparks, with the former president stiffly dancing to one of his favorite songs, Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” In his most recent presidential campaign, Trump mocked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, refusing to call his GOP primary opponent by his real name and instead dubbing him “Ron DeSanctimonious.” He added, for good measure, in a post on his Truth Social network: “I will never call Ron DeSanctimonious ‘Meatball’ Ron, as the Fake News is insisting I will.” As he campaigned against Biden, Trump taunted him in online posts and with comments and impressions at his rallies, deriding the president over his intellect, his walk, his golf game and even his beach body. After Vice President Kamala Harris took over Biden’s spot as the Democratic nominee, Trump repeatedly suggested she never worked at McDonalds while in college. Trump, true to form, turned his mocking into a spectacle by appearing at a Pennsylvania McDonalds in October, when he manned the fries station and held an impromptu news conference from the restaurant drive-thru. Trump’s team thinks people should get a sense of humor. “President Trump is a master at messaging and he’s always relatable to the average person, whereas many media members take themselves too seriously and have no concept of anything else other than suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome,” said Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director. “President Trump will Make America Great Again and we are getting back to a sense of optimism after a tumultuous four years.” Though both the Biden and Harris campaigns created and shared memes and launched other stunts to respond to Trump’s taunts, so far America’s neighbors to the north are not taking the bait. “I don’t think we should necessarily look on Truth Social for public policy,” Miller said. Gerald Butts, a former top adviser to Trudeau and a close friend, said Trump brought up the 51st state line to Trudeau repeatedly during Trump’s first term in office. “Oh God,” Butts said Tuesday, “At least a half dozen times.” “This is who he is and what he does. He’s trying to destabilize everybody and make people anxious,” Butts said. “He’s trying to get people on the defensive and anxious and therefore willing to do things they wouldn’t otherwise entertain if they had their wits about them. I don’t know why anybody is surprised by it.” Gillies reported from Toronto. Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report.Flags of 194 Countries Unfurled at JNTUK'Really disheartening': the dire situation Hunter renters face