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 Starmer project and the SDP: back to the 1980s
What is the Labour leader up to? It is not clear from his recent vague pronouncements — could the real goal not be winning an election, but creating the 1981 split in reverse, with the left forced into a rival party, asks KEITH FLETT
The first Social Democratic Party conference at the City Hall Perth in October 1981
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
KEIR STARMER has been active recently in defining what his project is. Luciana Berger, who quit Labour for the centrist Change UK party and then joined the Lib Dems has re-joined Labour — and others may follow.
Meanwhile, Starmer has been promoting his political missions, laid out in a speech and a New Statesman article. Although both were worthy enough in a general way, even the austere figure of Ed Balls noted that voters would want some more practical details about what Labour was actually going to do.
Starmer may be more popular than the Tories — but that popularity is lukewarm. A crowd chanted his name in central London recently at a protest against transphobia. “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn” chants were a familiar feature of the previous leader’s tenure. Unfortunately for Sir Keir, the recent chant was not a positive one.
More from this author
KEITH FLETT looks at the long history of coercion in British employment laws
The government cracking down on something it can’t comprehend and doesn’t want to engage with is a repeating pattern of history, says KEITH FLETT
While Hardie, MacDonald and Wilson faced down war pressure from their own Establishment, today’s leadership appears to have forgotten that opposing imperial adventures has historically defined Labour’s moral authority, writes KEITH FLETT
10 years ago this month, Corbyn saved Labour from its right-wing problem, and then the party machine turned on him. But all is not lost yet for the left, says KEITH FLETT
