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

I HAVE just returned from the Labour Party conference in Brighton, a conference that was vibrant, exciting and full of debate in the hall and across the fringe.
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell, consistently Labour’s best performer, is building a reputation as a credible, knowledgeable, competent chancellor-in-waiting. His speech was stuffed with new policy announcements that would radically improve the relationship between workers and their bosses while improving productivity and giving people a stake in, and some control over, their work.
The key pledges were to end in-work poverty by increasing the “real living wage” to more than £10 an hour, cutting the average working week to 32 hours over four days within 10 years and ending the opt-out from the European Working Time Directive, which lets firms get round the rules on limiting working hours to 48 hours a week.

From Grangemouth’s closure to Europe’s highest drug deaths, 23 per cent of children in poverty and ferries seven years late, all parties who’ve governed in the last 20 years lack vision or inspiration — we need a new way forward, writes NEIL FINDLAY


