Tribune – Comment, news and reviews from Britain's democratic left

Andrew Brons, the newly-elected British National Party MEP for Yorkshire and Humberside, is, like his leader Nick Griffin, usually suited and booted when on public parade. His is now the apparently acceptable face of the far-right in Britain today.

Labour Party chiefs are facing a backlash over the treatment of MPs accused of abusing the parliamentary expenses system, following the resignation of Norwich North MP Ian Gibson.
Mr Gibson resigned with immediate effect last Friday following a decision of the “star chamber” investigating MPs’ claims that he should be barred from standing as a Labour candidate at the next general election.

Fresh wildcat strikes will break out across power station building sites if employers thwart a national strike ballot over undercutting of British workers, the GMB union warned this week.
The warning comes as Unite and the GMB announced they would ballot workers for strike action, after talks on revising the national agreement for engineering construction workers broke down. A nationwide strike could see up to 50,000 workers walking out on a scale bigger than the strikes at Lindsey Oil Refinery and other sites earlier this year.

Northern Ireland’s main Unionist party, the Democratic Unionists, endured a humiliating electoral disaster in the battle for the province’s three MEPs. For 30 years, the DUP had always topped the poll ahead of its bitter rivals the Ulster Unionists.

The Communication Workers’ Union has called for a discussion with the Government on all aspects of Royal Mail’s future, but stopped short of cutting its ties with Labour, at its annual conference. The vote came as ministers indicated that the part-privatisation of Royal Mail will be delayed, as Tribune revealed last week.

If the results of last week’s European elections in Britain were almost exactly as bleak as forecast, the results across the rest of the European Union were, for the left, little better. The only glimmer of good cheer came from Athens, where PASOK went up to nine seats, reflecting its lead over New Democracy in Greece, and Ireland, where the financial crisis and resultant re-evaluation of the merits of both regulation and the Lisbon Treaty saw the Irish Labour Party gain seats. Meanwhile Declan Ganley, sugar daddy of the transnational Libertas Party and the man who funded the “No” campaign, failed to win a seat.