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
WHAT does Liz Truss’s failed leadership say about where the Tories are going? Well, it says they are going to lose the next election, so you might not think it matters.
The Tories haven’t recovered from Truss’s self-destruction. The more Rishi Sunak flails around to recover from her tanked polling, the worse he does.
But if you look a bit longer term, there is the very real danger that the Tories will return soon enough, especially if the next Labour government is — as it promises to be — uninspiring.
Labour’s toxic centrists have wealthy backers but there’s little to suggest they can win over MPs or party members in an open fight, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
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
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
Every Starmer boast about removing asylum-seekers probably wins Reform another seat while Labour loses more voters to Lib Dems, Greens and nationalists than to the far right — the disaster facing Labour is the leadership’s fault, writes DIANE ABBOTT MP


