Latest editorial
BBC’s Panorama dedicated last week’s show to exposing how big British drug firms like GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) regularly made bribes and other payments to doctors to encourage them to prescribe their pills.
It was a good show, but didn’t say how deeply the British Establishment was implicated in these corrupt practices.
All the time GSK was involved in the bribery and questionable payments, they were directed by a board that included James Murdoch, son of Rupert, and Chris Gent, a Tory donor and adviser to David Cameron.
![[Pic: Andrew Wiard]](https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/sites/default/files/styles/desktop/public/2026-01/19860406_a_wiard_0001.jpg.webp?itok=d2RMNwWw)
LAURA DAVISON traces how Murdoch’s mass sackings, political deals and legal loopholes shattered collective bargaining 40 years ago – and how persistent NUJ organising, landmark court victories and new employment rights legislation are finally challenging that legacy
Enduring myths blame print unions for their own destruction – but TONY BURKE argues that the Wapping dispute was a calculated assault by Murdoch on organised labour, which reshaped Britain’s media landscape and casts a long shadow over trade union rights today
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
SOLOMON HUGHES asks whether Labour ‘engaging with decision-makers’ with scandalous records of fleecing the public is really in our interests