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

KEIR STARMER is emerging as a threat to Labour prospects. Whether the Labour leader believes what he says or simply doesn’t regard it as a legitimate subject for reflection is no longer a matter open to debate.
There is a growing conviction that Starmer speaks with conviction only to endorse Britain’s imperial foreign policy, express unshakeable loyalty to every manoeuvre by Nato, unchanging fealty to the United States and any act of the Israeli state.
For a British electorate largely convinced that politicians are liars he is mendacity personified. So permanent is the shadow of darkness cast by his mendacity that it has now begun to eclipse that even of Boris Johnson.

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