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
Caledonia dreaming: a stronger economy with independence?
VINCE MILLS calls into question the SNP’s recent claim that freedom from Westminster, while remaining under the thumb of the Bank of England by keeping sterling as the currency, would work for anybody — or even be allowed by the EU
TALKING A BIG GAME: The SNP’s claimed links between independence and economic prosperity don’t match the realities of EU membership
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
WHATEVER else the SNP government’s new publication A Stronger Economy with Independence is about, it is not about independence. This publication, the third in the series, would have an “independent” Scotland firstly chained to the Bank of England by sharing a common currency with the remainder of the UK until (at some unspecified date in the future) it creates its own currency. This is necessary for the next big step in Scottish liberation — membership of the European Union.
More on the currency issue later, but let’s start with some common ground. Nobody from Rishi Sunak-supporting Tories to the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist–Leninist) would deny that current performance of the Tory government is anything less than shambolic.
But, and I am sure CPB-ML would agree with me here, there is an enormous difference between the capitalist system and its managers, or in this case, bad managers.
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
