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
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Keir Starmer and the Labour’s supposed ‘broad church’
Normally in British politics, leftwingers defect right. Under Blair and now Starmer however, this trend seems to reverse, calling into question the ‘broad church’ that welcomes Tories and excludes socialists, writes KEITH FLETT
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer with former Conservative MP Natalie Elphicke in his parliamentary office in the House of Commons, London, after it was announced she has defected to Labour, hitting out at the "broken promises of Rishi Sunak's tired and chaotic government". Picture date: Wednesday May 8, 2024.
In the wake of Ann Widdecombe’s murder, JOHN GREEN wonders whether the government will really get to grips with the root cause of these attacks on our MPs
The new PM’s opening addresses offered hope, council homes and reform — but little detail on how any of it will be delivered, warns CLAUDIA WEBBE
Despite the screeching from the right-wing media, Burnham’s speech chimed with the public mood - and socialists should take advantage, says Morning Star editor BEN CHACKO
Scotland's Labour leader cannot continue to evade responsibility for the party's decline, argues LAUREN HARPER
Nature as well as society works dialectically, asserts the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School
HISTORICALLY, political defections in Britain have tended to go from left to right.
Beyond individual renegades, there are two significant markers: Ramsay MacDonald’s decision to split Labour and form a national government in 1931 and the departure of right-wing Labour MPs to the SDP (now the Lib Dems) in the early 1980s.
The 1930s also offered two further examples of significant splits. The first was Oswald Mosley’s New Party, which led to fascism. The second was the Independent Labour Party (ILP), which tried to recreate an independent socialist presence outside of Labour but was unable to do so.
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Keir Starmer's early political life suggests a very different future from the one he ultimately embraced, says 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
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Corbyn and Sultana’s ‘Your Party’ represents the first attempt at mass socialist organisation since the CPGB’s formation in 1921, argues DYLAN MURPHY