Secret consultation documents finally released after the Morning Star’s two-year freedom of information battle show the Home Office misrepresented public opinion, claiming support for policies that most respondents actually strongly criticised as dangerous and unfair, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
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Streeting will follow Labour’s well-trodden path
LESLIE HUCKFIELD explains how the roots of the shadow health secretary’s affection for the private health sector can be traced back to Patricia Hewitt and her New Labour heyday
Labour shadow health secretary Wes Streeting in an ambulance, during a visit to the London Ambulance Station in Waterloo, central London, December 14, 2023
Our groundbreaking report reveals how private rail companies are bleeding millions from public coffers through exploitative leasing practices — but we have the solutions, writes Aslef Scottish organiser KEVIN LINDSAY
With Reform UK surging and Labour determined not to offer anything different from the status quo, a clear opportunity opens for the left, argues CLAUDIA WEBBE
Reform’s rise speaks to a deep crisis in Establishment parties – but relies on appealing to social and economic grievances the left should make its own, argues NICK WRIGHT
This year’s Bristol Radical History Festival focused on the persistent threats of racism, xenophobia and, of course, our radical collective resistance to it across Ireland and Britain, reports LYNNE WALSH
A maverick’s self-inflicted snake bites could unlock breakthrough treatments – but they also reveal deeper tensions between noble scientific curiosity and cold corporate callousness, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
The FBU is demanding 52 weeks of full pay for women firefighters, highlighting the unique health risks they face — and the continuing need to recruit and retain more women if policies like this are still not in place, writes SEONA HART
HISTORY shows that the meaningful and lasting components of neoliberalism always come from the left.
Though political history will hardly rank Wes Streeting’s proposed dismemberment of the NHS alongside Francois Mitterand’s abandonment of his 1981 Union de la Gauche, Bob Hawke’s 1983 Prices and Incomes Accord with trade unions in Australia, Clinton’s 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act or Gerhard Schroeder’s 2003 Hartz IV reforms in Germany, for British politics Streeting’s ambitions go further than Tony Blair’s 1995 attack on Clause Four.
As much as currently possible, this piece seeks to provide a political Ordnance Survey map of how he seeks to overcome its contours.
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When privatisation is already so deeply embedded in the NHS, we can’t just blindly argue for ‘more funding’ to solve its problems, explain ESTHER GILES, NICO CSERGO, BRIAN GIBBONS and RATHI GUHADASAN
Labour warned that workers expect better as anger mounts over welfare cuts and public-sector pay
Diverting public funding to grow private-sector ‘spare capacity,’ actively undermines the funding and staff available to the NHS and results in a worse service, write JOHN PUNTIS and TONY O’SULLIVAN
