FRAN HEATHCOTE believes that while the the Chancellor outlined some positive steps, the government does not appreciate the scale of the cost-of-living crisis affecting working-class people, whose lives are blighted by endemic low pay
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It’s not too late to halt the Tories’ scheme to rip off your union
TIM DAWSON urges readers to oppose the proposal for a flat-rate levy on trade unions
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
The 2025 Budget shores up the PM’s political position with headline-grabbing welfare U-turns, but with no improvements on offer to declining public services or living standards, writes MICHAEL BURKE
The unifying victory of Irish progressive forces in the presidential campaign should be a salutary lesson to the left in this country, argues MARY GRIFFITHS CLARKE
Martin Taylor, the hedge-fund multimillionaire who has poured millions into pushing Labour rightwards, helped finance Lucy Powell’s supposedly dissenting campaign — suggesting her victory was not the ‘soft-left’ rebellion some have claimed, says SOLOMON HUGHES
A November 15 protest in Mexico – driven by a right-wing social-media operation – has been miscast as a mass uprising against President Sheinbaum. In reality, the march was small, elite-backed and part of a wider attempt to sow unrest, argues DAVID RABY
IT IS no surprise that this government puts the interests of bosses ahead of ordinary people. Just occasionally, however, the detail of Tory schemes to promote the narrow interests of employers is breathtaking.
Dig into the small print of the ongoing consultation on the imposition of a levy on trades unions, for example, to find just such an instance.
This consultation arises from the 2016 Trade Union Act — a wholly nasty piece of legislation that even Brexit Secretary David Davies compared to the devices of the Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco.
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The Bill addresses some exploitation but leaves trade unions heavily regulated, most workers without collective bargaining coverage, and fails to tackle the balance of power that enables constant mutation of bad practice, write KEITH EWING and LORD JOHN HENDY KC
It is only trade union power at work that will materially improve the lot of working people as a class but without sector-wide collective bargaining and a right to take sympathetic strike action, we are hamstrung in the fight to tilt back the balance of power, argues ADRIAN WEIR
Removing unnecessary bureaucracy and other avoidable costs could save up to a quarter-billion, giving us painless solutions to protect legal aid, writes PROFESSOR ANSELM ELDERGILL
