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 powerful unelected figures in the land
Gavin Williamson should have remembered the National Security Secretariat serve the system, not each government - and Jeremy Corbyn would be wise to remember that too, says NICK WRIGHT
Sir Mark Sedwill
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
GAVIN WILLIAMSON was chief whip, responsible for discipline, in the most fractious and disunited parliamentary Tory Party in living memory. He helped Theresa May become prime minister and called in the debt to be appointed defence secretary. Williamson then set about proving his inadequacy for the job with such a catalogue of maladroit gaffes and juvenile utterances as to evoke disbelief and hilarity among the military types nominally junior to him in rank and status.
Of course, Britain’s military and security establishment more or less runs itself conscious that ministers come and go while the defence of the imperial realm traditionally depends on the permanent caste of professionals to which they belong by birth or preference.
Where the arriviste Williamson came unstuck was in not taking account of the new importance the security apparatus enjoys.
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