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
If the ‘adults are back in charge’ we’re in deep trouble
SOLOMON HUGHES tracks down the dark and disturbing history of one of politics' most tiresome refrains and finds it has never meant anything other than war, neoliberalism — and the childish refusal to properly justify either
When centrists and right-wingers talk about the ‘grown-ups in the room’ they are either selling the idea of technocratic calm replacing immature demands for economic justice — or war.
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
ONE of the more cringe current centrist slogans is “the adults are back in charge” — meaning that there is a sense of maturity being shown by the Labour and Tory parties converging on the same old market-oriented politics.
Centrists like talking about “the grown-ups in the room” bringing technocratic calm to replace immature demands for public ownership or more taxation of the rich. It is a shallow argument, and it’s also another case where centrists have been so scared of a touch of socialism that they ended up borrowing an argument from the right.
When Keir Starmer fans make the “listen to the grown-ups” argument, it is supposed to make them seem mature — as if they are one of the grown-ups who need listening to. But it has the opposite effect, making it sound like they are the child who, unable to get the other kids to play with them, is calling for the “grown-ups” to come and help them out.
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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
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
US General Stanley McChrystal has been invited to advise on creating a ‘team of teams’ for healthcare transformation. His credentials? He previously ran interrogation bases where Iraqis were stripped naked and beaten, reports SOLOMON HUGHES
