As Colombia approaches presidential elections next year, the US decision to decertify the country in the war on drugs plays into the hands of its allies on the political right, writes NICK MacWILLIAM

LAST month I wrote about Cygnet, the US-owned private health firm that sells mental health beds to the NHS.
An inquest jury had just ruled that a patient who collapsed at their Cygnet Kewstoke hospital, dying soon after, received “gross failures” in her care.
The inquest jury found the “understaffed” Cygnet hospital failed to spot the danger of the patients wildly excessive water-drinking, driven by her poor mental health, which preceded her seizure and death.

It is rather strange that Labour continues to give prestigious roles to inappropriate, controversy-mired businessmen who are also major Tory donors. What could Labour possibly be hoping to get out of it, asks SOLOMON HUGHES

Keir Starmer’s hiring Tim Allan from Tory-led Strand Partners is another illustration of Labour’s corporate-influence world where party differences matter less than business connections, writes SOLOMON HUGHES

MBDA’s Alabama factory makes components for Boeing’s GBU-39 bombs used to kill civilians in Gaza. Its profits flow through Stevenage to Paris — and it is one of the British government’s favourite firms, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES

SOLOMON HUGHES asks whether Labour ‘engaging with decision-makers’ with scandalous records of fleecing the public is really in our interests