ALEX HALL interviews PAUL HOLDEN, whose bombshell book uses leaked documents to expose how the Starmer faction used systematic dishonesty to seize power and reopen the door to the corrupting ecosystem of corporate lobbying and sleaze
THE cost-of-living crisis continues to have a devastating impact on too many working families. Rising prices of everyday essentials mean that many are finding it impossible to survive. Usdaw’s survey of thousands of low-paid mainly key workers demonstrates the dire situation.
Nearly a third are struggling to pay gas and electricity bills every single month; over 60 per cent have relied on unsecured borrowing in the past year to pay bills, and around seven in 10 report that financial worries are impacting their mental health. While everyone is being impacted by the crisis, it is clearly having the greatest toll on those who can least afford it.
As a movement we need to be clear that the roots of this crisis are deeper than the Tories’ mismanagement of our economy or the global factors they like to blame. At the heart of the cost-of-living crisis is our weak employment rights framework, which robs workers of financial security or certainty and leaves them constantly vulnerable to economic headwinds and changes of circumstance.
Artists should not be consigned to a life of precarious working – they deserve dignity and proper workers’ rights, argues ZITA HOLBOURNE
Labour must not allow unelected members of the upper house to erode a single provision of the Employment Rights Bill, argues ANDY MCDONALD MP
Incoming Usdaw general secretary JOANNE THOMAS talks to Ben Chacko about workers’ rights, Labour and how to arrest the decline of the high street
By sticking together, working collectively and building the union, we can weather any uncertainty ahead, writes general secretary of Usdaw PADDY LILLIS



