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 has stepped into the politics of partition in Ireland with a visit to meet party leaders along with an array of cops and community groups, school kids and, most probably, spooks.
He dressed his substantive support for the Northern Ireland protocol with a diversionary attack on Boris Johnson’s mendacity – as if anyone, on this issue or any other, was surprised at the prime minister’s fully flexible relationship with truth and consistency.
Labour’s barely subliminal positioning on Northern Ireland is the contradictory message that under his leadership, notwithstanding the blanket support for the protocol, Britain would be more accommodating to unionist sentiment than Johnson – whose commitment to the Brexit compromise reached with the EU’s leaders entails a clear willingness to see the Irish border run under the Irish sea and Ireland as a whole to emerge as a more cohesive and distinct economic entity.

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