As the RMT Health and Safety Conference takes place, the union is calling for urgent action on crisis of work-related stress, understaffing and the growing threat of workplace assaults. RMT leader EDDIE DEMPSEY explains
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Spads and the city
To absolutely nobody's surprise, Theresa May's claim to govern by and for the common man has yet again been laid bare — by the unholy number of her former 'special advisers' flocking to the corporate lobbying fold, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
After receiving their real P45s, those in Theresa May’s administration have found new ways to feather their corporate nests
In the third of a series of articles, Storming the Heavens author JENNY CLEGG introduces the key themes of her book on the Chinese revolution
The US president’s career is defined by a consistent use of racist tropes and provocation. Why are world leaders so silent over his repeated vitriolic prejudice, asks ROGER McKENZIE
The Mandelson scandal reveals a political settlement in which democratic choice is curtailed and the power of markets eclipses the will of voters – only the left can challenge this, writes JON TRICKETT MP
NICK WRIGHT recalls one man’s journey from student revolutionary to Labour grandee – part of a wider world of working-class militants and communist activists whose lives shaped a generation and who should not be forgotten
Paul Holden’s book, The Fraud, exposes a hidden war inside Labour, where claims of anti-semitism, amplified by media power and factional networks, were used to break Corbynism and recast the party. JOHN ELLISON revisits the scandals, investigations and suppressed evidence from that era
WHEN Theresa May fell to Boris Johnson last July, her flock of special advisers (Spads) was released into the wild. A Cabinet Office “transparency report” released in March reveals that, while May tried to make backing the people who were “just about managing” her theme, her Spads uniformly flew into the service of consultancies serving big corporations.
Spads are the ministerial assistants who are paid as civil servants, but are “political” appointees hand-picked by ministers, so they are important figures in how the state is run.
Most Spads only have to seek approval from their department under the “Business Appointment Rules” for post-government jobs. They are exempted from having to apply to the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, the already weak watchdog guarding the “revolving door” between government and business.
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