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
JULY saw two major new announcements on housing from the Labour Party. But the announcements, from Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and the new Labour Growth Group of MPs, propose very different things.
Rayner wrote an Observer article saying Labour must deal with the housing crisis because it blights people who need decent homes. Rayner said she wanted to help “families struggling to cover soaring rents and meet mounting mortgage costs,” and “tenants paying through the nose for damp, cramped and unsafe conditions.”
Rayner promised Labour would push for “the biggest wave of social and affordable housing in a generation.”
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
Building is the solution for much of our housing crisis – and will also help to address poverty, ill health, and even anti-social behaviour and alienation, writes KENNY MacASKILL
It is rather strange that Labour continues to give prestigious roles to inappropriate, controversy-mired businessmen who are also major Tory donors. What could Labour possibly be hoping to get out of it, asks SOLOMON HUGHES


