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

IT IS an odd sensation to watch as a whole cohort of Tory MPs call for the resignation of the Prime Minister’s grand vizier while the official parliamentary opposition remains mute.
Boris Johnson’s dogged defence of his consigliere has legitimised the precipitate relaxation of the lockdown measures that the Prime Minister has until now thought politically unwise.
Unless Dominic Cummings is sacked and Johnson doubles down on the existing advice to the public, then the sense that if the rules don’t apply to the Prime Minister’s minder then they don’t apply to anyone else will give effect to what big business wanted all along.

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