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
Illusions in liberalism still lie like a fog on our thinking
Just as we cannot detach colonialism or slavery from the golden age of liberalism, neither can we swallow modern-day mainstream rhetoric on rights and freedoms in the face of racist migration policies and war, writes NICK WRIGHT
DEPORTATIONS: Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has led a comeback for the Social Democrats, but under a harsher approach to immigration that has seen the focus turn from integration to repatriation
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
THERE is a measure of uncertainty about Rishi Sunak’s tenure at Downing Street. He is supposed to be the guarantor of fiscal responsibility and stable government. But he cannot be that sure of his footing in the parliamentary party if he has to maintain Suella Braverman in office as a sop to those he recently deposed.
There is of course, much-exaggerated liberal outrage at Braverman’s posturing, but the fact is that she is merely putting into words what are the essential features of Britain’s racist and discriminatory immigration policy, which itself is simply a different rendering of the principles which underpin the EU’s approach to the huge population shifts which are an unavoidable feature of 21st-century capitalism.
The notion of Europe as the embodiment of liberal values underpins much middle-class thinking about present-day politics. It is a famously flexible feature of the 18th and 19th-century notion of Europe a beacon of civilisation. This comes into violent conflict with reality every time a migrant child dies entering the watery frontiers of the EU in the Mediterranean.
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
