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
Albert Camus, Covid-19 and what it says about modern Britain
The existentialist philosopher foresaw the makings of our present crisis, where the wealth and prosperity of the West led us to an apathetic refusal to accept the dread realities of the pandemic, writes JOHN WIGHT
“The furious revolt of the first weeks had given place to a vast despondency, not to be taken for resignation, though it was no less a sort of passive and provisional acquiescence” — Albert Camus, The Plague
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
AS only he can, Albert Camus in his classic 1947 novel, The Plague, mines the human condition in the midst of a crisis in which solidarity, selflessness and mutuality are the means of survival and in which individualism, selfishness and self-regard are death itself.
Camus: “This whole thing is not about heroism. It’s about decency. It may seem a ridiculous idea, but the only way to fight the plague is with decency.”
The personal and social struggle of a public-health emergency such as we are now experiencing is both unprecedented in its human toll and revelatory in what it has told us about our common humanity. And when we trace the trajectory of the pandemic we cannot but avoid the harsh truth that Covid-19 denialism began, here in Britain, at the level of government, a society nailed to the cross of free-market dogma and underpinned by rampant individualism.
More from this author
Mary Kom’s fists made history in the boxing world. Malak Mesleh’s never got the chance. One story ends in glory, the other in grief — but both highlight the defiance of women who dare to fight, writes JOHN WIGHT
The Khelif gender row shows no sign of being resolved to the satisfaction of anyone involved anytime soon, says boxing writer JOHN WIGHT
When Patterson and Liston met in the ring in 1962, it was more than a title bout — it was a collision of two black archetypes shaped by white America’s fears and fantasies, writes JOHN WIGHT
In the land of white supremacy, colonialism and the foul legacy of the KKK, JOHN WIGHT knows that to resist the fascism unleashed by Trump is to do God’s work
