JOE BESWICK of the London Renters Union talks to the Morning Star’s new Left on Record programme
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Where is the radicalism local government needs?
Labour peer PAULINE BRYAN assesses a new report from the think tank, Our Scottish Futures
Scotland money
The unnecessarily violent police intervention at a Quaker place of worship is a PR disaster and will only serve to deepen the chasm between them and the public. SYMON HILL reports
ANDREW MURRAY wonders whether recent opinion polling and a fresh local authority by-election result in Ilford are an indication that the time is ripe for the left to make inroads
Due to the actions of this government, the challenges facing those with disabilities, such as spinal cord injuries, are nigh on insurmountable, argus RUTH HUNT
General secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions GAWAIN LITTLE calls for support and participation in the national partnership organised to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1926 general strike
After brutal police crackdowns on pensioners and the forced approval of secret IMF deals, trade unions are finally responding to grassroots pressure and fighting back against savage neoliberal reforms, reports BERT SCHOUWENBURG
Bizarrely, Trump’s latest attacks now include the National Zoo, but his real and racist agenda is to strip everything black from the country’s cultural institutions, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
WITH a yet another round of cuts being visited on Scottish councils, it is essential that there is a discussion on the future of local government in Scotland.
From that point of view the report by the think tank, closely associated with Gordon Brown, Our Scottish Futures is welcome. The title Re-Wiring Scotland is more than a nod to Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, for ultimately the report adopts the contentious position that Scotland should legislate to allow a “metro mayor” system.
However there is a at least one point in the report that is not contentious at least across the left in Scotland, that is the need to decentralise power from the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood to local authorities.
More from this author
There is little benefit coming to Scotland or the wider UK from projects like Rosebank or Jackdaw – or indeed renewables – as profits are siphoned out of the country by foreign companies, writes PAULINE BRYAN
Unwanted, imposed Tory interventions on Scotland fuelled demands for devolution, and today Labour risks repeating past mistakes if Ian Murray seeks to bypass Holyrood on spending, warns PAULINE BRYAN
With a lack of radical thinking from the Starmer-led UK government, support for Scottish independence is unlikely to evaporate any time soon – spelling trouble ahead for Anas Sarwar, argues PAULINE BRYAN
The party north of the border needs to have a serious think about how it retains its newly elected MPs in the future. How those MPs are able to assert Scottish policy in the UK Parliament will be key, argues PAULINE BRYAN