There have been penalties for those who looked the other way when Epstein was convicted of child sex offences and decided to maintain relationships with the financier — but not for the British ambassador to Washington, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
A bad time for Johnson is letting the SNP off the hook
VINCE MILLS writes that the SNP's piecemeal progressivism around income tax is dwarfed by its cuts to local services — but with a universally reviled Tory Party in charge in Westminster, little criticism sticks
Labour’s new Treasury unit will ‘challenge unnecessary regulation’ by forcing nominally independent bodies like Ofwat to bend to business demands — exactly what Iain Anderson’s corporate clients wanted, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
DR DYLAN MURPHY looks at a Big Brother Watch report which exposes the government as an enabler of DWP secret spying on benefit claimants
The EU faces a critical choice: will it remain in the shadow of an increasingly unreliable US ally, or will it forge its own path in a multilateral world where co-operation with China is essential, asks MARC VANDEPITTE as leaders meet for the EU-China Summit
A lot of discussion about how the left should currently organise – including debate on whether the Green Party is a useful vehicle for advance – runs the risk of refusing to engage with or learn from the reasons the left was defeated previously, argues KEVIN OVENDEN
For Egypt trade trumps the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, but how long can the country’s ‘misleaders’ – and others in the region – continue their indifference against the popular will of their own people, asks ROGER McKENZIE
LAST WEEK saw one of the biggest blows to the credibility of Boris Johnson’s awful Tory government — and more specifically to Johnson’s personal standing.
Note: this was not because of the reactionary Nationality and Borders Bill, which will make the perilous Channel crossings even more deadly, nor the authoritarian Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill for England and Wales, a godsend for any police chief who wants inconvenient demonstrators off the streets.
Nor was it even the Tories’ Internal Market Act which concentrates all powers over state aid and competition policy in the hands of the Westminster Parliament, taking away the powers delegated to the Scottish Parliament — or for that matter, the Subsidy Control Bill also designed to protect “the free market” from the dangers of public authorities using subsidies in progressive ways.
More from this author
VINCE MILLS cautions over the perils and pitfalls of ‘a new left party’
VINCE MILLS says politicians of various parties are interpreting the result in self-serving ways, but it contains little comfort for the left
VINCE MILLS gathers some sobering facts that would inevitably be major obstacles to any such initiative
That Scotland was an active participant and beneficiary of colonialism and slavery is not a question of blame games and guilt peddling, but a crucial fact assessing the class nature of the questions of devolution and independence, writes VINCE MILLS
