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

ONCE we grasp the connection between a decade or more of ever-rising levels of corporate profits (and the enormous bonuses and remuneration packages which inevitably accompany corporate power and ownership) and the year-on-year decline in the purchasing power of our wages, the systemic nature of Britain’s crisis becomes clear.
The dual character of British capitalism — simultaneously a key player in the global imperialist system engaged in the extraction of super-profits from the labour of millions both at home and abroad — emerges.
Supranational entities like the European Union, the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank appear as part of the natural order and only bit by bit does it emerge that these are the superstructural elements that police this system of super-exploitation.

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