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
Class, history and geography in the general election
KEITH FLETT offers some historical context to the election campaign’s final period
Starmer and Sunak arrive for their BBC debate in Nottingham
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
A FOOTNOTE that the socialist historian EP Thompson made to his A Psessay in Ephology about the 1959 general election, though over 60 years old, does seem to capture quite well the relation between the media, leaders debate and opinion polls currently: “A psephologist is a man employed by the mass media to research into what people think the mass media has told them to think. An ephologist is a man employed by the Observer or BBC to interpret the results of psephology and who makes an ephing good thing out of it.”
Polling outfit Ipsos has published an MRP poll which shows the current break down of support in each constituency. For those who want the Tories out its good news. There is a Labour landslide coming with even hard-right figures like Robert Jenrick, Suella Braverman and Liz Truss not safe.
The headlines generated by such polls often come with brief if unexplained historical references. For example, the Tories are set to win fewer seats than at any election for over 100 years.
Meanwhile the projected Labour majority could be one of the largest the party has ever achieved. Sir Keir Starmer goes on constantly about his changed Labour Party but it is not a new approach. Very similar wording was used by Tony Blair in 1997. By “change” of course he means that he has purged much of the left from Labour. Purging voters is more difficult.
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KEITH FLETT looks at the long history of coercion in British employment laws
The government cracking down on something it can’t comprehend and doesn’t want to engage with is a repeating pattern of history, says KEITH FLETT
While Hardie, MacDonald and Wilson faced down war pressure from their own Establishment, today’s leadership appears to have forgotten that opposing imperial adventures has historically defined Labour’s moral authority, writes KEITH FLETT
10 years ago this month, Corbyn saved Labour from its right-wing problem, and then the party machine turned on him. But all is not lost yet for the left, says KEITH FLETT
