SOLOMON HUGHES recommends Sunjeev Sahota’s recent novel set in a trade union election campaign for its fresh approach to what unites and divides workers, but wishes the union backdrop was truer to life
LAST week saw the shameful scene of Labour publishing an attack ad that claimed that Rishi Sunak does not care about protecting children or jailing paedophiles. The ad appalled many, including Labour supporters — such behaviour is expected from the Tories but Labour is meant to be better. The ad was rightly and heavily criticised as dirty politics that exploited abused children.
It was also inaccurate and misleading. The Tories are an appalling party of government, but sentences are decided by the courts, not by Sunak — and the sentencing guidelines were not written in the short period since he took over as Prime Minister. As former chief prosecutor Nazir Afzal put it: “There are a thousand reasons to attack the Tories on a broken criminal justice system better than one that Rishi Sunak doesn’t control.”
The Labour campaign tweet was also hypocritical, as Keir Starmer as director of public prosecutions had played a central role in setting sentencing recommendations.
CLAUDIA WEBBE argues that Labour gains nothing from its adoption of right-wing stances on immigration, and seems instead to be deliberately paving the way for the far right to become an established force in British politics, as it has already in Europe
To quell the public anger and silence the far right, Labour has rushed out a report so that it can launch a National Inquiry — ANN CZERNIK examines Baroness Casey’s incendiary audit and finds fatal flaws that fail to 'draw a line' under the scandal as hoped



