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

KEIR STARMER’S suspension of Jeremy Corbyn for daring to tell the truth that Labour’s anti-Semitism problem was exaggerated for partisan political purposes reveals that his reputation for a forensically sharp legal mind is a confection. Either that or he is an unprincipled schemer.
The issue here is not the present LOTO’s maladroitly managed disciplining of Corbyn: Starmer and official Labour’s crude disregard for due process — and the brazen indifference to the EHRC’s own prescription for how such matters should be dealt with — were all priced into the political costs that this exemplary action entails.
Rather than a mild-mannered, non-confrontational leader who goes along with his nominal opposite number in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, Starmer is suddenly transformed into an avenging angel — a resolute crusader consumed with righteous fury not at a government that has hastened the deaths of as yet uncounted thousands — but at his predecessor who is to be cast into the darkness.

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