Last month, French President Emmanuel Macron somberly announced at a cabinet meeting that the Ukraine war and climate change signalled the end of “an era of abundance”. Wait a moment, monsieur, when did the ‘era of abundance’ begin? Did we blink and miss it?

William Ruto was sworn in as Kenya's fifth president on Tuesday 13 September, a week after the Supreme Court rejected a challenge by his opponent in a close-fought election, in which Ruto received 50.5 percent of the vote against 48.8 percent for Raila Odinga. Neither of these reactionary bourgeois politicians offered any way forward for the Kenyan masses, who face increasingly intolerable conditions.