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

Time, gentlemen please. The GMB union is calling time on pub owning companies that charge inflated beer prices and rent to their tied landlords – and then, the union says, are happy to kick them out when the recession-hit publicans can’t pay. Landlords have been joining the union in their thousands and are prepared to take industrial action if the beer tie is not reformed. John Street’s man in the pub (no, not Charlie Whelan) hears that pubs minister John Healey, who met aggreived publicans this week, is due to announce a series of practical measures to help pubs and the communities they serve – including a “relaxation” of the beer tie that would allow pubs to buy cheaper guest ales. In any case, ministers need to act fast to stop pubs going to the wall, with the GMB estimating that 22,000 are in immediate danger. The GMB’s Paul Maloney says: “The reason it’s happening is because of the greed of the pubcos who put themselves into debt, and now the publicans have got to service the debt.”

Any plans Boris Johnson may have of returning to the House of Commons in the future to challenge David Cameron for the Tory leadership are set to be upstaged at the general election. Boris is likely to get a new family rival in Parliament following the wafer thin selection of his younger brother, Jo Johnson for the Tory-held seat of Orpington in Kent. The seat became vacant after John Horam, the former Labour turned SDP turned Tory, decided to st and down. Jo, like Boris, is an Old Etonian with a first-class degree from Balliol College, Oxford. He started his career as a merchant banker, but then joined the Financial Times, working in Paris and South East Asia before heading up the paper’s influential Lex column. Tory insiders say the 39-year-old is as “quirky” as Boris and he bears an uncanny – if slimmer – resemblance to his older brother. He is married to Guardian columnist Amelia Gentleman. Jo is typical of some of the Cameron camp in that he has no experience of campaigning or standing for local government and Parliament. The Tory website shows he has raised some £12,500 out of a target £22,500 to fight the seat, but is running no active campaigns. According to Conservative Intelligence, the private subscribers newsletter, he is a Thatcherite on economics but socially liberal. His website claims he was driven to stand because of “Labour’s epic mismanagement of the economy”. One wonders if ambition will outstrip brotherly love.

Angry campaigners are calling on Conservative leader David Cameron to name and shame the Tory MP who killed Andrew Gwynne’s anti-poverty bill. The bill, which would have prevented vulture funds profiting in Britain, was effectively killed when three Conservative MPs got into a huddle in the Commons, dropping their heads down, and then one shouted “Object!” Sally Keeble, Labour MP for Northampton North, accused the Conservatives of “duplicity” by pretending to back the proposed legislation, only to destroy it on the night. And Tom Harris, MP for Glasgow South, said: “Objecting to the bill was an act of political malevolence. We have the right to know the identity of the MP because the electorate should be able to judge whether he is a maverick acting outside the mainstream of his party or a central representative of Savid Cameron’s Conservatives.”