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

THE MOST contentious issue in Britain’s politics for a generation finds socialists — who agree on almost every political question of significance — at loggerheads over whether Britain should leave the European Union.
Set against the clear injunction from the British people and backed by what we might describe as the “Lexit internationalist left” — to leave the European Union — we have a spectrum of views which equally claim an internationalist identity and assert that the EU can be transformed in a socialist direction.
There has always existed a trend in Labour, on the right and centre of the party, which saw first the Common Market, and later the EU in its various mutations, as the place for a Labour government to situate Britain.

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