Unions and MPs tell PM to quit after Burnham's triumph in Makerfield

Voters have delivered a stay of execution for Labour and exposed limits to Reform’s advance. But will Burnham offer a political alternative rather than just a different face at the top, asks ANDREW MURRAY

MATT KERR takes stock of a night of by-elections, where the long repeated warnings for Labour and the political class remain stubbornly unheeded

The US blockade of Cuba raises risks of a new global pandemic, experts warn at Unison conference

Rising support for Farage’s party reflects Labour’s failure to defend working-class living standards or offer a credible alternative to neoliberal decline, says JOSEPH MILLS

Starmer makes desperate effort to buy off Burnham as polls suggest he is set to win Makerfield by-election

Cabinet Office sets out plan for bringing services like cleaning and security back in-house

Campaigners and MPs blast Court of Appeal’s decision to uphold Palestine Action ban

If Labour continues to abandon the promise of economic hope and security, Reform will keep filling the vacuum in communities once considered its heartlands, argues IAN LAVERY MP

The FBU leader speaks to Ben Chacko about cuts, collapsing Starmerism and confronting the far right

Transparency records reveal senior trade officials held dinners and strategy meetings with the notorious lobbying firm even as controversy over its Epstein links deepened, says SOLOMON HUGHES

Starmer promised a reset after Labour’s dire electoral performance, but the government’s programme still falls far short of the bold action needed, says ANDY McDONALD MP

The Starmer project is going up in smoke – but if the left cannot swiftly build a viable alternative, the country faces the grim reality of a hard-right takeover, says ANDREW MURRAY

ALAN SIMPSON says responses to the Golders Green attacks risk deepening divides across our country

Meanwhile, far-right Reform UK projected to gain around 1,550 representatives

Welsh Labour leader ELUNED MORGAN explains how a vote for the party will deliver the progress and continuity the country needs on manufacturing, renewables, creative industries and more

Starmer facing Labour rebellion as back-bench MPs come out against plan to block probe into his handling of Mandelson

The party’s internal enforcer built his sinister influence in the shadows – but nemesis now appears to be at hand, says ANDREW MURRAY

JOANNE THOMAS argues that unions’ political voice remains vital to winning stronger rights and protections for working people

The labour movement must challenge the endless austerity narrative — and Unity Consulting will play its part to complement the work already being done by trade unions

DIANE ABBOTT looks at how a declining US has resorted to globalised violence to salvage any vestiges of political and economic hegemony

Polls show Labour facing meltdown in May elections for devolved parliaments and local authorities

Socialists cannot back warfare over welfare, MPs and peace campaigners warn after former Nato boss demands government cuts social spending to finance weapons

KEITH FLETT looks at the state’s efforts to limit protest rights from the 19th century to today’s repression of the Palestine movement

The government has few aces up its sleeve when it comes to managing popular anger, argues ANDREW MURRAY

Thousands expected to join largest anti-racist march in a generation in London this Saturday

Green Party leader Polanski slams Chancellor Reeves' ‘unbelievably weak response’ to the ‘enormous bill hikes facing households’

Changing visa rules are pushing young migrant workers into precarious work and exploitation, report NUPUR PALIWAL and SOMIHA CHATTERJEE of the Student Federation of India

Young Communist League general secretary GEORGINA ANDREWS says the far right are filling a vacuum created by Labour’s abandonment of working-class interests — we have to give our class a better offer

Lawyer slams prosecution on final day Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Ben Jamal and Stop the War Coalition vice-chair Chris Nineham's trial

Until ministers stop deferring to the market and start drawing hard lines, the public will remain at the mercy of private power, says MATT KERR

As the Stop the War Coalition holds its annual conference, ANDREW MURRAY warns that Britain’s alignment with US foreign policy is fuelling global instability and diverting billions from welfare, wages and public services

While Wes Streeting claims Britain lacks a growth strategy, his own NHS plans reveal one – turning the health service’s vast troves of patient data into a commercial asset for tech giants, investors and private healthcare firms, says HELEN MERCER

Prime Minister urged to ditch Trump as campaigners warn US's illegal war in Iran will raise energy bills and worsen public services

Tehran retaliates with attacks on Israel, the Gulf Arab states and crude oil flows

While the result signals a restless appetite for real change, it also underlines how much organising, beyond the ballot box, is still required to turn protest into lasting transformation, argues DAN ROSS

Labour’s by-election defeat tells a story Scotland has known since 2008. A party that assumes loyalty while offering little more than managed decline will eventually discover that voters always have somewhere else to turn, says MATT KERR

With our ruling class struggling to secure a new vehicle for power and the disintegration of the traditional party system, a volatile new chapter is opening, sharpened by war, austerity and electoral distortion, argues NICK WRIGHT

KEITH FLETT highlights the inimical role of the strategist who helped shape Tony Blair’s ascent and whose political blueprint continues to echo in the era of Keir Starmer

Court strikes down Palestine Action ban as government slammed for its promise to fight the decision in appeals

A political culture of spin and wilful blindness where journalists play along with power has meant the so-called ‘Prince of Darkness’ has been given an easy ride by the media – until now… MATT KERR reports

Tax exile Sir Jim Ratcliffe slammed after claiming that ‘UK is being colonised’ immigrants

The Carpathia isn’t coming to rescue this government still swimming in the mire, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER

The US president’s career is defined by a consistent use of racist tropes and provocation. Why are world leaders so silent over his repeated vitriolic prejudice, asks ROGER McKENZIE

Paul Holden’s book, The Fraud, exposes a hidden war inside Labour, where claims of anti-semitism, amplified by media power and factional networks, were used to break Corbynism and recast the party. JOHN ELLISON revisits the scandals, investigations and suppressed evidence from that era

The Mandelson scandal reveals a political settlement in which democratic choice is curtailed and the power of markets eclipses the will of voters – only the left can challenge this, writes JON TRICKETT MP

Anti-war campaigners say the Health Secretary's private admission to Peter Mandelson only makes him more guilty of complicity in Israel’s crimes

Corbyn’s intervention exposes a corrupted system, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE

Paul Holden’s The Fraud reveals how a network of donors, MPs and opaque organisations quietly organised to destroy Corbyn’s leadership and manufacture a new centre of power inside Labour, writes JOHN ELLISON

The British Prime Minister’s Beijing visit marked the end of a long diplomatic hiatus and produced tangible, if limited, economic results, says KEITH BENNETT

MATT KERR takes a winter journey through poetry, labour and memory, from Glasgow to Newcastle, arguing that our radical past isn’t something to revere from a distance, but a tool still meant to be used

Megapicket to shut down Birmingham’s refuse sites

The Labour Growth Group and its think tank partner, the Good Growth Foundation, have taken funding from major lobbying firms linked to housebuilders, banks and Heathrow – raising questions about corporate influence at the heart of Starmer’s pro-growth project. SOLOMON HUGHES reports

Labour announces largest policing overhaul in 200 years, including the creation of a ‘British FBI,’ sparking human rights concerns

As liberal commentators puzzle over the Prime Minister’s record-breaking unpopularity, the reasons remain glaringly obvious to everyone else, says IAN SINCLAIR

Trade unionists and MPs hit back at party executive's decision to block Greater Manchester mayor from running in upcoming Gorton and Denton by-election

PM could be ejected from Downing Street if Welsh Labour loses Senedd elections in May, First Minister says

Lawyers to challenge approval of data centre in Britain that ‘pollutes on the scale of an international airport’

Campaigners call on public to join protests across the country demanding Starmer stands up to the far-right US president

But hospitality industry warns other businesses are being forgotten

ANSELM ELDERGILL examines our laws concerning the treatment of animals and their rights

After 15 years of spending cuts and regressive redistribution, the British economy is weaker, investment is still anaemic and living standards are stalled – yet all major parties remain committed to a policy that has repeatedly failed to deliver recovery, says MICHAEL BURKE

SOLOMON HUGHES says Starmer has done everything the Westminster set think Labour leaders should do – but it hasn’t endeared him to the public

Labour’s decline, Tory exhaustion and the advance of Reform UK signal the end of stable two-party rule, with British politics entering a volatile new phase, says NICK WRIGHT

Barristers say there is ‘no evidence’ that Labour's drastic plans will reduce the backlog of cases waiting to be heard in court

BEN CHACKO salutes the Morning Star cartoonists

Campaigners urge Labour ministers not to entertain Tory and Reform UK's ‘racist’ calls to strip human rights activist Alaa Abd Fattah of his citizenship over decades-old social media posts

Labour’s cynical recruitment drive normalises militarism, diverts attention from youth unemployment and public service cuts, and seeks to build consent for an increasingly aggressive defence agenda, argues GEORGINA ANDREWS

As unemployment rises and living standards fall, May’s economic announcement risks locking Britain into further decline rather than charting a new course, warns JON TRICKETT MP

Campaigns against nuclear weapons on the Clyde, financial backing for arms firms and rising militarism are converging with solidarity for Palestine, as Scotland’s peace movement builds momentum ahead of the 2026 Holyrood election, says ARTHUR WEST

600 educators sign open letter urging government to protect lives of prisoners jailed for more than a year without trial over alleged direct action linked to Palestine solidarity

Activists graffiti the 8 hunger strikers' demands across the Deputy PM's north London office 

Opinion polls point to electoral collapse, parliamentary rebellion and a looming leadership challenge as Starmer’s Labour haemorrhages working-class support and the far right exploits the vacuum left by a hollowed-out party, says NICK WRIGHT

Five hunger-striking prisoners jailed without trial for alleged offences related to Palestine Action have already been taken to hospital

New reforms ‘could open door to rampant profiteering and chaos’

Looking back to Engels’s reflections on the ILP’s emergence in the 1890s offers a revealing lens on the forces shaping a new working-class politics in 2025, says KEITH FLETT

Unions and left MPs slam government for cutting day one protections from unfair dismissal into the Employment Rights Bill

DIANE ABBOTT warns that Shabana Mahmood’s draconian asylum proposals fuel racist scapegoating and risk demoralising Labour’s base – potentially paving the way for Farage to No 10

Government urged to tackle high electricity prices and boost insulation in next week’s Budget as elderly, low-income families and homeless people struggle to stay warm

Far-right figures ‘Tommy Robinson’ and Nigel Farage praise Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood's plans to force asylum seekers into 20 years of limbo before being able to settle in Britain

While all of good faith on the left should wish the new party well, ANDREW MURRAY pinpoints some of the major challenges it will need to grapple with as it approaches its founding conference later this month

Roger McKenzie talks to general secretary of Unison CHRISTINA McANEA about the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on members, the local government funding emergency and the threat of Reform UK

The Labour leadership’s narrow definition of ‘working people’ leads to distorted and unjust Budget calculations, where the unearned income of the super-wealthy doesn’t factor in at all, argues JON TRICKETT MP

MARK SERWOTKA issues a rallying call to those committed to building a new radical socialist party of the working class to commit to real democracy, not imaginary or performative gestures

Plaid Cymru’s spokesman on health and social services MABON AP GWYNFOR, in the second article of a two-part series, argues that Labour’s contempt for voters and backward-facing approach have led to widespread mistrust in Wales 

New poll exposes fears around migration as ‘manufactured’

Labour’s persistent failure to address its electorate’s salient concerns is behind the protest vote, asserts DIANE ABBOTT

With the last bricks of the red wall crumbling in the Caerphilly by-election, Starmer and co cannot count on the spectre of Farageism translating into votes for them come the next general election, argues ANDREW MURRAY

Home Office has ‘repeatedly cut corners and wasted considerable amounts of taxpayers’ money,’ report warns about the policy

The visa system traps workers with abusive employers, creating a vulnerable workforce scared to complain for fear of deportation — that is why we’re campaigning for a ‘common sponsorship’ model instead, writes FAVOUR DAVIDKING

The City is leaning on Rachel Reeves to cut welfare spending — when what’s needed is cuts to all the benefits given to the mega rich, corporations and banks to help them not pay or blatantly dodge their fair share of tax, explains BERNIE EVANS

Labour could break pledge to equalise minium wage, warn campaigners 

CAROL WILCOX argues for the proper implementation of the land value tax, which could see unused plots sold off and landlords priced out of landlordism, potentially resolving the housing and planning crises

The ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans was based on evidence of a pattern of violence and hatred targeting Arabs and Muslims, two communities that have a large population in Birmingham — overturning the ban was tacit acceptance of the genocidal ideology the fans espouse, argues CLAUDIA WEBBE

Politicians and campaigners back police's plans to ban Israeli fans attending Aston Villa v Maccabi Tel Aviv match

Chancellor urged to unfreeze housing benefit and publish government’s long-delayed homelessness strategy as figures show  more than 172,000 children are growing up in temporary accommodation

Call comes as unemployment rate hits highest level since early 2021, the height of the pandemic

Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana discuss the formation of a new leftwing party 

JOHN GREEN has doubts about the efficacy of the Freedom of Information Act, once trumpeted by Tony Blair

The far right feels comfortable openly saying the most racist, extreme things imaginable and harassing left events in ways unseen in living memory — we desperately need an anti-fascist Labour Party to replace the current appeasement regime, writes ANDREW MURRAY

CEREN SAGIR reports from the CND fringe meeting during the Labour conference, where speakers slammed a system where £99 billion nuclear arsenal replacement costs are ring-fenced while the two-child benefit cap remains

Labour will find increases in the state pension age are unacceptable, just as cuts to the Winter Fuel Allowance, personal independence payments and universal credit are — it needs to change direction immediately, writes PCS general secretary FRAN HEATHCOTE

Rapper Mo Chara cleared of all charges due to prosecutors' ‘technical error’

It’s hard to understand how minor divisions can come to dominate the process of building a challenge to the rule of the rich when the desperate need for a vehicle to fight poverty and despair is so abundantly clear, writes MATT KERR

It is the private sector’s failure of investment that is driving the economic crisis – Labour needs to realise that it’s the public sector that holds the key to getting the country back on track, argues MICHAEL BURKE

More than 100 protesters expected to hold signs opposing Palestine Action ban outside the venue in Liverpool

Climate, peace and Palestine activists condemn ‘war criminal’ Donald Trump's policies on his second state visit to Britain

Our economic system is broken – and unless we break with the government’s obsession with short-termist private profit, things are destined to get worse, warns Mercedes Villalba

‘We need more opposition to the far-right threat,’ Stand Up to Racism says

TUC hits back at banking boss who suggested public-sector pay should be curbed because the economy falling

The Prime Minister’s hamfisted promotional video promising to go ‘further and faster’ coincides with Angela Rayner’s resignation over tax dodging and Mandelson’s long overdue departure over Epstein — incredible timing, writes MATT KERR

Unison leader says international direct action needed to get aid to Palestinians and prevent more Israeli war crimes

BEN CHACKO reports on fears at TUC Congress that the provisions in the legislation are liable to be watered down even further

Campaigners urge new Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to drop ‘unenforceable’ ban on Palestine Action

In the current climate, it is vital to bust the myths and put forward the case for a humane and decent social security system that supports people, argues FRAN HEATHCOTE

MATT WRACK issues a clarion call for a rejuvenation of public services for the sake of our communities and our young people

Meanwhile, Campaigners raise contempt of court complaint against Home Secretary Yvette Cooper over claims Palestine Action was proscribed due to violence against people

Morning Star editor Ben Chacko speaks to JON FARLEY – the retired headteacher whose arrest in Leeds exposes the grim absurdity of the Palestine Action ban

RMT demands Labour deliver on its promise to start the ‘biggest wave of insourcing in a generation’

White racist rioting has many an infamous precedent in Britain, writes DAVID HORSLEY

Thousands expected to attend next protest against Palestine Action ban, organisers say

Government urged ‘to tackle the root causes’ of the NHS crisis and improve ‘social care services’

Meanwhile, Defend Our Juries say the fact that only half of the protesters faced arrests ‘shows how unworkable and unenforceable this ban is’

Israeli media awash with leaks and rumours of Netanyahu’s plans to seize Gaza. Meanwhile, the unrelenting siege of Gaza continues unabated 

The proscription of Palestine Action is illegitimate and unethical, say 300 Jewish people, including Sir Geoffrey Bindman KC, Mike Leigh, Michael Rosen and Gillian Slovo, in letter to Starmer

A new report validates disabled people’s criticisms of a welfare system which, under capitalism, is designed to punish rather than support, says Dr DYLAN MURPHY

Letter to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper – to be delivered by a delegation of Jews to Downing Street today

Starmer’s conditional recognition of the Palestinian statehood dismissed as ‘gesture politics’

Starmer’s decision to suspend Diane Abbott yet again demonstrates a determination to maintain and propagate a hierarchy of racism, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE

Deep disillusionment with the Westminster cross-party consensus means rupture with the status quo is on the cards – bringing not only opportunities but also dangers, says NICK WRIGHT