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

WITH trade talks between Britain and the EU going down to the wire, there were sighs of relief in European capitals on Thursday that a second crisis had been averted.
In fact, the deal struck with the Polish and Hungarian governments not to veto the bloc’s budget and recovery fund for next year has kicked the can down the road in typical EU fashion.
The two hard-right regimes secured a political agreement that weakens a legal mechanism to halt disbursement of those funds to states deemed by the European Commission to be in breach of the EU’s version of the “rule of law.”

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

As Starmer flies to Albania seeking deportation camps while praising Giorgia Meloni, KEVIN OVENDEN warns that without massive campaigns rejecting this new overt government xenophobia, Britain faces a soaring hard right and emboldened fascist thugs on the streets

