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

Prime Minister David Cameron this week bowed to public opinion and pressure from National Health Service staff and his Liberal Democrat coalition partners to slow down his controversial proposals to open up the NHS to private commercial providers.

Unison is getting ready to ballot 1.2 million members in local government and the National Health Service for an all-out war on the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition Government.

The only individual accused in the collateralised debt obligation scandal for which Goldman Sachs paid a $550 million fine last year, London-based Fabrice Tourre, will have to defend himself against a slimmed-down Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit, a New York judge ruled.

More than 80 per cent of people living in privately rented housing in the centre of London face cuts in housing benefit – and could have to move out of their homes, according to the first detailed report into the effect of the Government’s cap on benefit payments.

Teachers have voted overwhelmingly for a fresh wave of industrial action over the Conservative-led coalition’s “shabby” attacks on public sector pensions.

Chancellor George Osborne, who this week gave his keynote Mansion House speech in which he announced plans to firewall high street banks’ customers’ accounts from their high-risk investment bank subsidiaries, got a welcome boost from falling unemployment figures.

After weeks of off-the-record carping, Shadow Cabinet in-fighting, and hostile briefing reminiscent of the worst of the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown hostilities, Labour Party leader Ed Miliband this week sought to draw a line under it and give some indication of the future direction of his party.