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
Today's political realities must be the left’s priority
Regardless of what politicians say does or does not come up ‘on the doorstep,’ our movement needs to engage in real, practical and mass agitation that’s rooted in working people’s lives, argues KEVIN OVENDEN
Keir Starmer waves at Labour conference in Brighton earlier this week
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
“IT’S not coming up on the doorstep” is one of those politicians’ lines that tells us that they would rather be struck by lightning than be asked that question.
In my experience it antagonises the audience twice. First, most people know that most MPs are on their doorstep only at election time. The most common refrain on the actual doorstep is “Oh, so you’ve turned up — must be an election on?”
Second, most people do not like being told by supposedly important talking heads what their true concerns are or what they are allowed to say about them.
More from this author
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
As Starmer flies to Albania seeking deportation camps while praising Giorgia Meloni, KEVIN OVENDEN warns that without massive campaigns rejecting this new overt government xenophobia, Britain faces a soaring hard right and emboldened fascist thugs on the streets
The shameful passage of the assisted dying Bill where safeguards have been all but jettisoned is symptomatic of a hyper-liberalised society where the cult of individualism reigns supreme, argues KEVIN OVENDEN
The proxy war in Ukraine is heading to a denouement with the US and Russia dividing the spoils while the European powers stand bewildered by events they have been wilfully blind to, says KEVIN OVENDEN
