The Tories introduced the 50% strike ballot threshold to make industrial action harder. MATT WRACK argues that a Labour government has no justification for leaving it on the statute book
THE latest offensive by Keir Starmer and those around him to marginalise the left in the Labour Party has captured media headlines, and of course, the full approval of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Times.
Starmer, whose grasp of the dynamics of capitalism does not appear to be significant, most likely does not understand that it is the market system itself that creates the material conditions for a political left, seeking to focus ways of changing it. A left politics cannot simply be purged out of existence.
How that presents itself politically can vary, but we are coming up to the anniversary of the events that led to the formation of the first ever minority Labour government on January 22 1924.
JOHN McINALLY sees little chance of change at Westminster, and calls on the left to get serious about building a real alternative
Keir Starmer's early political life suggests a very different future from the one he ultimately embraced, says KEITH FLETT
It’s not just the Starmer regime: the workers of Britain have always faced legal affronts on their right to assemble and dissent, and the Labour Party especially has meddled with our freedoms from its earliest days, writes KEITH FLETT
Who you ask and how you ask matter, as does why you are asking — the history of opinion polls shows they are as much about creating opinions as they are about recording them, writes socialist historian KEITH FLETT


