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

WHEN candidates for the leadership of the Tory Party — and at this moment the office of prime minister — argue that their opponent backs “socialist” policies we have to wonder if we have entered an alternative universe in which the normal rules of political gravity no longer apply.
It is true that the Conservative Party exists mostly in a hermetically sealed ideological bubble in which the issues that animate the great majority of people only appear as relevant if they threaten the party’s grip on power.
A clear illustration of this principle is the result of a poll conducted among the Tory faithful this week by Rupert Murdoch’s Times newspaper which showed that intervention to prevent climate change is at the very bottom of their priorities.

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