Lewis Goodall
Newsnight producer

Image source, TUC

"It's the fault of the militant trade union barons!" no reply the unions, the government is to blame.Sometimes British industrial relations seems barely to have moved on from the 1980s.

Except, everything has changed. They now have a number of big problems:

1.) Membership At their peak, before the Thatcherite tidal wave, union membership stood at some thirteen million. Today that number stands at 6.4 million. That means that overall union membership is down to the same level as it was in 1937.

2.) Public vs Private sector split: That means that only 25% of the overall workforce is unionised. In the private sector their influence is smaller still with only 14% of all private sector employees belonging to a trade union.

In the public sector, however, the situation is much rosier for those fabled "barons". Fifty-five per cent  of those employees are unionised. It is their last bastion of strength.

3.) Young people: Long term, the unions also have a problem with demographics. Since 1995 the number of members over 50 has increased considerably, whilst the number under 30 has fallen substantially.

4.) Geography: It won't come as any surprise to anyone that trade union membership is at its strongest in those parts of the country with an historic culture of heavy industry and mass organisation. As the graph below shows, Wales, the North, Scotland score highly. The problem is this isn't exactly where the major job creation has been over the past two decades.

Image source, HM Treausry

5.) Sector: Finally take a look at this graph which shows trade union density by industry. Again, all the boom areas such as construction, real estate, science, retail aren't on the right side of the average if you were a trade union leader.

Image source, HM Treasury

Given this overall national picture, it's no surprise many in the union movement are concerned for their survival as even a residual force with the government's proposed changes. They are reduced demographically, regionally, industrially. With the ability to strike so curtailed, many in the public sector who remain paying their subs might just wonder if there really is any point any more.

The issue of fox-hunting has certainly put the question of "English votes for English laws", or EVEL, right at the top of the political agenda. That's after the Scottish National Party made it clear it would vote against a relaxation of the laws in England and Wales. 

Here are the SNP's Tommy Shepherd and the Conservatives' Graham Stewart going head-to-head on the issue on last night's Newsnight. Emily started by asking Tommy Shepherd if it had taken the wind out of the SNP's sails when Cameron cancelled the vote?  

Chris Cook
Newsnight Policy Editor

Image source, Reuters

Was Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister, pursuing a "madman" strategy? That is what Lord Finkelstein wrote, external this morning in The Times.

I don't think that's right. In truth, I think you can understand the Greek negotiating position much more simply: they got the economics wrong. I've written about it at more length over here.

Lewis Goodall
Newsnight producer

Image source, Jeff Overs/BBC

"Join us! Join us!" bellowed the Tory benches as Harriet Harman stood up for PMQs this week. After her refusal to oppose the government's welfare changes, Conservative members wanted to hug her close, as did the Prime Minister.

Again and again he quoted the acting Labour leader's words back at her, to a stony set of Labour MPs.  Given this was a difficult situation for her, she didn't do too badly. She meandered through a series of questions, on Greece, unemployment and tax credits. Did we learn anything? A few tidbits:

1.) Cameron supports Greek debt relief: blink and you'll miss it but the PM confirmed he thought there needed to be debt relief for Greece, I think for the first time. On the other hand he repeatedly used the "nothing to do with us, guv" line so he doesn't seem in any hurry to pressure for it amongst his fellow European premiers. He also confirmed that if Greece did leave the Eurozone, as a fellow EU member the British government would assist with humanitarian aid. I'm sure the Greeks can't wait for all the aid boxes of cheddar when all the feta runs out. The PM, ever the master of understatement confirmed that he thought the Greek people had had a "difficult time."

2.) Tax credits: One chink in the government's armour has been revealed apropos its tax credit changes.  Harman put the PM under pressure over the status of sick people who might come off the register, lose their in work benefit, only to resume work and no longer be eligible. Wonder if Osborne might move to iron this out quickly before it catches on outside the Commons chamber.

John Redwood thinks all you need to illustrate the problems of the Euro are two banknotes – one €20 and one £20 note. 

First of all look at the British £20 note

Image source, Bank of England

* The Queen represents the British Government

*There is a statement from the Bank of England:  “I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of twenty pounds”

* It is signed by the Chief Cashier of the Bank of England

* It has a picture of… the Bank of England

* It has a logo of… the Bank of England

In short – this is a pretty unequivocal IOU. It’s an explicit "promise to pay" from the Bank of England, assured by the British Government.

Now take a look at the €20

Image source, ECB

What does this note actually mean?

*  The gothic windows are not real, they don’t exist. They’re a symbol of “an artistic period” of European architecture

* The flag on the note is the EU flag – despite nine countries within the EU having nothing to do with the Euro

* There is a signature, but it’s not explained who it is or what their role is

* There is no explanation as to what his note actually means for the owner

* There is only one reference to the European Central Bank on both sides of the note

Redwood argues that this tells you all you need to know about how the Eurozone works. The Euro notes are unclear, ungrounded and do not adequately represent the governments that back the ECB.

Duncan Weldon
Economics correspondent in Athens

Image source, Reuters

Today, as the Greek Parliament votes to pass the first tranche of the provisional deal agreed on Monday, much attention is being focused on the latest Debt Sustainability Analysis from the IMF. It asks how sustainable Greek government debt would be post-programme and basically concludes "not very".

Some form of debt relief - whether an actual write down or a very long interest payment holiday of 30 years is needed. That makes sense - almost no one thinks that Greece's debt burden can be dealt with through growth and austerity alone. Although it's worth remembering this is a medium and long term issue not a short term one, for whilst the level of Greek debt is sky high the burden of that debt is currently very low. Interest payments have always been cut and temporarily suspended and debt service in Greece is lower than in Portugal or Italy.

The really odd thing here is that Greece wanted the IMF to end its involvement in the bailouts whilst the Germans insisted they remain a player. And yet on debt relief they are firmly on Greece's side. Is this a block to a deal? If, in the medium term the Europeans refuse any form of debt relief - then yes. But, if after the Greeks have passed the required measures debt relief can be discussed, then no. This report states the obvious - some form of debt relief is needed, but debt relief will only be politically sell-able in Northern Europe if Greece is seen to be keeping up its half of the bargain.

Stories in the news include the Greek parliament voting today on the bailout deal. Meanwhile the IMF says Greece's public debt is now "highly unsustainable" and is urging debt relief on a scale "well beyond" what's been considered until now. 

The Government publishes its Trade Union Bill today, which would require a higher proportion of workers to vote in a ballot before a strike was legal. It will also propose that union members would have to say whether they wanted to pay a political levy.

It's rare to hear from people who've been held captive by Islamic State militants. When we do, the stories are harrowing. Last night we ran a powerful report by Sue Lloyd-Roberts - she has been speaking to three young Yazidi women who managed to escape. Here's the online write up.  

Duncan Weldon
Economics correspondent in Athens

Emily Maitlis
Newsnight Presenter

At this point in the economic cycle of Greece’s woes, you have to wonder – just a little – what Amal Clooney is really doing. The new privatisation fund proposed yesterday is "established in Greece, managed by Greek authorities under the supervision of the relevant Euro institutions". They are targeting asset sales of fifty billion euros, a sizeable chunk of Greek GDP. An extraordinary transfer of sovereignty in peace time over these assets with – let’s be honest – no real mandate from the Greek people.

The Greeks would say they’ve seen it all before. But if they're still trying to get those Elgin Marbles back, more than two hundred years on, what hope is there for something on this scale?

Ed Brown
Newsnight producer

This morning, the Government pulled plans to hold a free vote on a relaxation to the fox hunting ban - presumably because it wasn't sure it had the numbers to win after the SNP stated they would definitely oppose it.

There has been some suggestion that this problem will be solved once the Government have put through their proposals for English Votes for English Laws.

But James Landale, the BBC's Deputy Political Editor, has highlighted a passage in the proposals that suggests otherwise - it reads as follows:

(2) If a division is held on a motion to which this order applies, the motion shall be agreed to only if, of those voting in the division- 

(a) a majority of Members, and 

(b) a majority of Members representing qualifying constituencies, vote in support of the motion.

In other words, a majority of votes amongst English MPs is a necessary but not sufficient condition for an English only vote to pass. As currently drafted, my reading is that all the changes would do is make sure that things that were not supported by a majority of English MPs would not pass.

Whereas English only measures that were not supported by Scottish MPs but were supported by a majority in the house nonetheless - including a majority amongst English MPs - would pass.

In the case of fox hunting, then, it's not clear that EVEL would make a difference - even with EVEL in place, if a majority of Parliament votes against something (including Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish etc MPs) then, regardless of whether it's an English or a UK wide measure, it ain't happening.

*This is just my reading of the text. You can have a look yourself here, external

Image source, Press Association

The Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has questioned the deal struck yesterday over the future of Greece. Mr Carney told the Treasury Select Committee this morning that achieving the aims set out by the Euro-group will take "Herculean efforts". He also pointed out that the continuing problems with Greece "underscore the number of institutional shortcomings that still exist with European Monetary Union".

Here are his comments at greater length: "The statement by Euro group leaders on Monday morning is an attempt to craft a programme which will allow Greece to return to sustainable growth. What's embedded in that statement will require Herculean efforts from all sides. It will be tested. The scale of structural reforms, the scale of fiscal adjustment, the scale of privatisation that will ultimately be required are significant. In addition there is an observation about the necessity of smoothing out the debt profile.'

"The process by which this agreement was struck, the nature of the agreement, the scale of the challenge underscore the number of institutional shortcomings that still exist with European Monetary Union". 

These are critical words from the Bank of England Governor at an important moment for Greece and the Euro. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras now has to get the support of the Greek parliament for the deal in the next few days. He is likely to face opposition from many on the left of his own Syriza party, which was swept to power on an anti-austerity platform.

Image source, Press Association

Stories today include fox hunting, the Greek debt deal, and the Iran nuclear agreement. 

Labour's acting leader, Harriet Harman, seems to have stepped back from a confrontation with MPs in her party over her position on benefit cuts. As Allegra wrote in her post earlier, the row was looking "pretty serious". 

Ms Harman had been criticised for announcing that Labour wouldn't oppose restrictions on Child Tax Credits announced in last week's Budget. But Ms Harman,  who will hold a private meeting with Labour backbenchers this evening -  now says it will be up to a future leader to decide policy.  

The only leadership candidate to support Ms Harman, Liz Kendall, said Labour had to show voters it had changed. However Andy Burnham and Jeremy Corbyn said the cuts should be opposed - while Yvette Cooper said tax credits were vital to many families.

Ed Brown
Newsnight producer

As I've written about before, the true state of Labour's leadership race is rather difficult to measure - because we don't have any polling on it. 

But right now, something vaguely similar is going on in the US - the race to be the Democratic candidate for President. And that certainly has been polled. Look at this chart from the Huffington Post of the state of the race:

Image source, Huffington Post

Hillary Clinton is obviously the front runner, and most people expect it to be more or less a Clinton coronation. The purple line in second place for most of the chart is for a candidate that isn't even standing. But who's that green line rising into July?

It's Bernie Sanders, a candidate far off to the left of the usual presidential nominee. Here's a quote froman interview, externalhe did with the New York Times recently:

“Ordinary people are profoundly disgusted with the state of the economy and the fact that the middle class is being destroyed and income going to the top 1 percent.”  

Sounds a bit Corbynesque doesn't it?

It was widely reported that Ed Miliband believed that the UK had fundamentally moved to the left after the financial crisis. A lot of people think the UK electorate proved him wrong at the ballot box a few months ago.

But it's curious that in both the US and the UK, an unusually left wing candidate is getting an unusual amount of attention. Allegra reported on this blog earlier that private research by the Labour leadership contenders suggests a lot of Labour members sympathise with Corbyn. And that US Democratic polling chart speaks for itself.

In other words, conventional wisdom suggests that whilst the whole electorate appears not to have moved to the left, there does seem to be evidence that Labour activists and registered Democrats have done. 

If true, this leaves whoever wins the Labour or Democrat leadership/presidential nomination with a rather difficult tightrope to walk. Do they tack towards the centre, where the ultimate election will be won? Or do they tack left, and make certain that they win the nomination for it in the first place?

And here we come to the difference between Sanders and Corbyn. 

Right now, Hillary Clinton has a big enough lead that she can probably afford to ignore some of those more left wing Democrats and concentrate on the big prize after the nomination. But if internal pollingisshowing Corbyn doing well, then the dynamics of a four way Labour leadership race may mean he pulls the whole field out towards him. We may have got a hint of that this morning as they opposed Harriet Harman's plans not to oppose Conservative changes to tax credits.

If Ed Miliband really was wrong about the British electorate moving to the left, that's bad news for Labour's prospects over the next few years.

Duncan Weldon
Economics correspondent in Athens

Ed Brown
Newsnight producer

Sajid Javid yesterday said something that appeared to completely contradict much of what we'd heard about the budget:

"This is not a regressive Budget" he told Andrew Marr. 

On the face of it, Javid is flat out wrong. This is the graph from the IFS - which appears to show a strikingly regressive budget:

Image source, IFS

In general, when a politician contradicts the IFS, the IFS is the one in the right.

But is this really what Sajid Javid meant? Let's look at another quote from him in the same interview:

"This is a Budget, like the others since 2010, we've made sure it's the richest in society that make the biggest contributions, One of the numbers published in this Budget, for example, the richest one per cent are going to pay 27 per cent of total income tax. I think that's fairness."  

To me, this looks like the Business Secretary is answering a slightly different question. Namely, if you take the whole tax and benefit system as it will stand after the budget, will it be progressive or regressive? 

Now, Sajid Javid's answer to this question is correct. In the UK we have a progressive taxation system - we tax rich people more than we tax poor people, and we give more benefits to poor people than rich people. This budget hasn't changed that fact. After this budget, rich people will still contribute more to the public finances than poor ones.

So, how do we square these two apparently contradictory positions? 

Quite simply.

After the budget, our tax and benefits system will continue to be progressive (Javid's point), but the impact of this particular budget was to make it less so (the IFS point).