The Tories introduced the 50% strike ballot threshold to make industrial action harder. MATT WRACK argues that a Labour government has no justification for leaving it on the statute book
LOOKING down from my window onto Berlin’s broad Karl-Marx Allee boulevard a week ago Friday, I saw hundreds and hundreds of green tractors moving in two disciplined lines towards central Brandenburg Gate.
Similar lines all over Germany were angrily protesting against government measures, based on budgetary or ecological concerns, but which cut farm income, especially for struggling farmers.
Hostile placards on the tractors denounced government ministers; a few added makeshift gallows with their names. On Monday they converged for a giant national protest.
SEVIM DAGDELEN says European Nato states are escalating ever closer to direct conflict with a nuclear power, and sacrificing welfare states built up over a century to finance it
NICK WRIGHT returns to Berlin and finds a city in darkness and political turmoil
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is pouring €11.5bn into the Kiev swamp, blocking Trump’s peace plan, and pushing Nato right up to Russia’s borders – no matter if it costs hundreds of thousands of lives, warns SEVIM DAGDELEN


