Birmingham is a key test – perhaps the most important one – for the Tories in the local elections

We open a three-part series this week on May’s elections, beginning today with the cities that are all-out.

Mike Clancy: How the trade unions can help drive up productivity

Reversing the decline of collective bargaining would help to curb extortionate executive pay, under-investment and short-termism.

Conor Short: A minimum wage is a worker’s right. So why can’t every worker have it?

I suggest exploring the possibility of categorising self-employed work into two categories – self-employed work, and agency-supplied self-employed work.

Patrick Minford: More compliance. Lower productivity. Reduced growth. Why we must free ourselves from EU regulation.

If we do, we could reverse at least some of the six per cent hit to GDP it has caused so far. If we don’t, we could continue to lose productivity growth of 0.2 per cent a year.

Alex Morton: Why the Tory tendency to bash our friends and back our enemies – for example, over student immigration numbers?

The Conservatives need to support genuine allies – such as savers, home owners, small businesses, and the armed forces.

Robert Halfon: A new political movement is slowly emerging in our Party

Conservative Workers and Trades Unionists campaigns to ensure that we have the best policies for the rights, wages, and welfare of British working people.

Corbyn is mounting a coup d’état against parliamentary democracy

His reforms will cripple his MPs and are a posthumous triumph for Tony Benn’s belief in extra-Parliamentary action.

Liam Booth-Smith: The lifting of the public sector pay cap is bad policy and worse politics

Ministers should remain focused on delivering on their promise to cut the deficit, even if it means paying the iron price to do so.

Janet Finch-Saunders: Welsh taxpayers spend millions each year subsidising trade union activities

This cost should come from members’ subscriptions.

42 per cent and no majority 2) The Party must make the case for conservatism to a new generation of voters. It hasn’t for too long.

As time passes, a decreasing slice of the electorate has any experience at all of old-fashioned socialism. And the argument that it doesn’t work cuts little ice.

Nick Denys: We must persuade voters that the Tories are the real workers’ party

If the electorate still credit Labour with being the party that cares, it will always have a short path back to power.

Iain Dale: My election prediction. May will be back in Downing Street with a Commons majority of 74 seats.

Plus: Where I was when the poll was announced. What I will be doing during the campaign. And: the temptation to seek to stand as a candidate tugs at my sleeve…

Conservative councils are still subsidising trade unions with Council Taxpayers money

They should also leave the unions to collect their own subs.

Keith Prince: How to end transport strikes while respecting workers’ rights

Binding pendulum arbitration has dramatically reduced the number of strikes in New York,

David Waddington RIP

The loyal Home Secretary with a sharp wit who did great service to the Conservative Party and the nation.