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

THIS Friday 13, we will be able to make a provisional analysis of the election results. We cannot predict — on the morning of polling day — much about the result except to suggest that it will not present a simple picture and that any speedy analysis will be equally speedily dismissed.
Looking back on the campaign, I have recorded some of my encounters with electors on the doorstep, in the market place and in telephone canvassing.
These are necessarily impressionistic. They are drawn from my personal experiences in one North Kent constituency and are offered as a picture into the way in many people seem to think about politics.

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