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

PORTUGUESE medic Carlos Placido de Sousa was exiled to Britain following a daring prison break in January 1960 which freed the leadership of the Portuguese Communist Party.
A quiet man, tall, bookish and modest, it was De Sousa who both procured the drugs used to immobilise the guards in the fearsome Peniche fortress and drove one of the getaway vehicles.
With the notorious PIDE secret police on their tails, the revolutionaries went underground and into exile. For years De Sousa led the work of the PCP in Britain and edited the internationally renowned Portuguese and Colonial Bulletin which was the English language voice of the PCP’s strategy which culminated in the April 25 Carnation revolution.

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