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
Despite centrist stitch-ups, the left struggles on in Labour
We must salute those who decide to 'stay and fight' — but what we can reasonably expect to win now after three years of Keir Starmer's onslaught is much reduced, says NICK WRIGHT
THE SPIRIT REMAINS: Jeremy Corbyn with members of the NEU at rally, on February 1 2023, against plans for a new law on minimum service levels during strikes
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
WHEN last week, a reconstituted Labour Students called for an end to student fees it signified a return to serious student politics thus disproving Henry Kissinger quip: “The reason that university politics is so vicious is because the stakes are so small.”
The former Labour student organisation was wound up during the Jeremy Corbyn era after university Labour clubs disaffiliated in great numbers. It had an unsavoury reputation for neoliberal posturing and rampant careerism and even campaigned against free education. Its leadership were vicious precisely because the issues are important to these wannabe Blairites.
Last week the left won the Socialist Health Association’s leadership elections — beating the shadow health secretary’s team — and placed Labour’s health affiliate firmly in opposition to the slow-motion NHS privatisation that the party leadership favours.
More from this author
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
