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

Britain has become one of the most unequal societies – in terms of income – in the developed world, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said this week. The Paris-based economics think-tank found that top earners are soaring away from the rest of the country at the expense of both average earners and the [...]

Boris Johnson, the Tory Mayor of London, has seized £50 million from London’s fire budget reserves in two years, to give to the police in a desperate attempt to meet broken crime pledges in the run-up to next May’s elections. The Conservative Mayor, who is facing a tough battle with Labour’s Ken Livingstone for his [...]

A leading GP is appealing for 100,000 people who love the National Health Service to help him force the Conservative-led coalition to drop its controversial NHS Health and ­Social Care Bill. Kailash Chand, who is chair of Tameside and Glossop NHS, and has also served on the BMA Council and General Practitioners Committee, is campaigning [...]

Vladimir Putin’s ruling United Russia party has triumphed in parliamentary elections – albeit with a much lower share of the vote, prompting speculation that ­his­popularity is waning and his grip on power is weakening. Amid allegations that the elections had been rigged to favour Russia First, there were news reports, that Russian protestors were being [...]

As European leaders leave Brussels this weekend , they do so in the hope hoping that this latest in what is becoming a continuing series of “11th hour” eurozone rescue packages can be executed relatively swiftly  – without the uncertainty of, among other things, another Irish referendum. With technical details still being pored over by [...]

Vladimir Putin’s vision of a new Eurasian Union covering the footprint of the old Soviet Union has begun to take shape following a significant summit in Moscow. In what is being seen as a landmark agreement, the presidents of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan signed an agreement to establish a Eurasian Economic Commission – an intergovernmental [...]

The cost of borrowing for Spain rose sharply when the new conservative government sold “a shed load” of short-term debt on the financial markets just two days after winning a landslide victory in the country’s general election. Spain raised 2.98 billion euros in an auction of three- and six-month bills, but at much higher yields [...]

State-rescued bank Northern Rock, sold last week to a consortium fronted by entrepreneur Richard Branson, is being asset-stripped to finance its sale, Shadow Treasury Chief Secretary Chris Leslie said in the House of Commons this week. His intervention followed claims by Chancellor George Osborne that, under European Commission rules, the Government had been obliged to [...]

Justine Greening, the Transport Secretary, is meeting strong opposition in her bid to scrap and prune up to 200 regulations governing everything from passenger safety to seafarers’ protection on British ships as part of an agenda to cut “red tape”. Organisations from ships’ captains and senior officers to the RMT are ­furious at the move [...]

Fewer than one person in 10 believes Government claims that public-sector pensions are “gold-plated”, according to an independent poll commissioned by union Unite. Polling company Survation surveyed more than 1,000 adults ahead of next week’s strike by public-sector workers. According to its findings those polled believed by a margin of three to one  that unions [...]