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
No clarity on who really runs Scotland — or should
The election did not answer who truly owns and controls the nation on the core questions of its industry, resources and services — and neither will a simple 'in or out' referendum, writes VINCE MILLS
Scottish First Minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon on the steps outside Bute House in Edinburgh after the SNP won a fourth victory in the Scottish Parliament election
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
WRITING in mid noughties Professor David Miller made the point that “Scotland is governed not simply via the institutions of formal governance… Scotland is also run by political and economic decision-makers, only some of whom are based in Scotland.
“Other centres of decision making are obviously London and Brussels, the Headquarters of the World Trade Organisation, IMF and World Bank and the boardrooms of the transnational corporations, including those which have no interest or base in Scotland (even a negative decision not to site a factory or not to launch a product in Scotland is consequential).”
Arguably a Scottish election of the sort we have just had might have provided an opportunity to explore who owns and runs Scotland and what that ownership means for Scottish society and its industry and services and more importantly still, its democracy.
More from this author
VINCE MILLS cautions over the perils and pitfalls of ‘a new left party’
VINCE MILLS says politicians of various parties are interpreting the result in self-serving ways, but it contains little comfort for the left
VINCE MILLS gathers some sobering facts that would inevitably be major obstacles to any such initiative
That Scotland was an active participant and beneficiary of colonialism and slavery is not a question of blame games and guilt peddling, but a crucial fact assessing the class nature of the questions of devolution and independence, writes VINCE MILLS
