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
Reader’s note: In print, this article appeared in four parts over the course of the week.
I GREW up in Harston, five miles south of central Cambridge down the A10. A little tranquil village with a population of less than 2,000 with meadows, a school, village hall, pub, petrol station and post office-cum-store. And a village in an affluent part of Britain that has both a Porsche centre and a Ducati motorbike shop.
Harston has a gross disposable household income of £27,031 — compared to a national average of £20,425. The village is part of South Cambridgeshire, a constituency that in 2019 elected Conservative Anthony Browne to Parliament — who voted with his party in the House on all but one occasion out of 982 — and that has for many years been a Tory stronghold.
Burnham launches his campaign to return to Westminster
The new Scottish Parliament looks set to continue a cycle of managerial tinkering while public services face the axe, writes STEPHEN LOW
This by-election could plausibly see both Reform and Labour defeated — but splitting the left insurgent vote would put that at risk, argues CHRIS WILLIAMSON
CLAUDIA WEBBE argues that Labour gains nothing from its adoption of right-wing stances on immigration, and seems instead to be deliberately paving the way for the far right to become an established force in British politics, as it has already in Europe


