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
Proportional representation, power and class
Unsurprisingly, Keir Starmer has rejected reforming the first-past-the-post system out of hand. It is time to give up our lingering prejudices and recognise a step that would aid the left inside and outside of Labour, argues NICK WRIGHT
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
LAST week, opinion polls suggested that Labour would win 48 per cent of the vote and finish with 424 seats in the Commons in a general election. The Tories, on 21 per cent, would get 121 seats; the Lib Dems, on 10 per cent, 33 seats; the SNP, on 5 per cent, 49 seats and the Greens, on 7 per cent, just one seat.
This is even higher than the 40 per cent actually won in 2017 with Jeremy Corbyn’s radical manifesto.
Labour’s lead is the result when, in a first-past-the-post (FPTP) election regime, the Tories have become terminally unpopular. On this score, under proportional representation (PR), Labour should have 100 fewer seats; the Tories a handful more; the Lib Dems more than double and the Greens 44 new seats.
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
