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

SOCIALIST ideas are enjoying something of a revival. Here too. The prospect of a Labour government — even with the party in the midst of intensely destabilising struggle with a sizeable section of its MPs and party establishment — has the ruling elites, big business and the banks intensely anxious. But in the United States socialist ideas are also challenging the official consensus.
The US party system is crafted precisely to prevent the emergence of a political vehicle that might challenge the dominant corporate power which has, in the Democratic and Republican parties, two powerful political machines.
A Soviet leader once quipped — in response to criticism that political power in the USSR was exercised in a one party state — that the United States too was a one party state but, with typical American extravagance, it had two such parties.

Holding office in local government is a poisoned chalice for a party that bases its electoral appeal around issues where it has no power whatsoever, argues NICK WRIGHT

From Gaza complicity to welfare cuts chaos, Starmer’s baggage accumulates, and voters will indeed find ‘somewhere else’ to go — to the Greens, nationalists, Lib Dems, Reform UK or a new, working-class left party, writes NICK WRIGHT

There is no doubt that Trump’s regime is a right-wing one, but the clash between the state apparatus and the national and local government is a good example of what any future left-wing formation will face here in Britain, writes NICK WRIGHT

European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde sees Trump’s many disruptions as an opportunity to challenge the dollar’s ‘exorbitant privilege’ — but greater Euro assertiveness will also mean greater warmongering and militarism, warns NICK WRIGHT