Ecuador’s election wasn’t free — and its people will pay the price under President Noboa
Is Liz Truss heading for the 1870s?
The vague threats to restrict our trade union rights even further may well break agreements made when Queen Victoria was on the throne, writes KEITH FLETT

ONE of the two contenders for the Tory leadership has threatened to further restrict the activities of trade unions, an enduring obsession of the Thatcherite right.
The detail is inevitably lacking, but Liz Truss wants “minimum service levels” where public-sector workers have balloted for a legal strike. The implications of this are deeply concerning — even if probably not fully thought through by Truss’s team.
RMT leader Mick Lynch, writing in the Daily Mirror, argued that Truss wants to go back to 1871, the date of the Act that legalised trade unions. TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady has warned of a fundamental attack on the right to organise and an assault on democracy as understood across Europe.
More from this author
From bemoaning London’s ‘cockneys’ invading seaside towns to negotiating holiday rents, the founders of scientific socialism maintained a wry detachment from Victorian Easter customs while using the break for health and politics, writes KEITH FLETT

From bemoaning London’s ‘cockneys’ invading seaside towns to negotiating holiday rents, the founders of scientific socialism maintained a wry detachment from Victorian Easter customs while using the break for health and politics, writes KEITH FLETT

Facing economic turmoil, Jim Callaghan’s government rejected Tony Benn’s alternative economic strategy in favour of cuts that paved the way for Thatcherism — and the cuts-loving Labour of the present era, writes KEITH FLETT

Starmer’s slash-and-burn approach to disability benefits represents a fundamental break with Labour’s founding mission to challenge the idle rich rather than punish the vulnerable poor, argues KEITH FLETT