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
Scottish Labour now has 37 MPs – but it can’t get complacent
The party north of the border needs to have a serious think about how it retains its newly elected MPs in the future. How those MPs are able to assert Scottish policy in the UK Parliament will be key, argues PAULINE BRYAN
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer speaking in the House of Commons as Parliament returned with Labour ministers on the Government front bench for the first time in more than a decade
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
IN EARLY July the newly elected Scottish Labour MPs started arriving in Westminster just a day or two after the general election.
The 34 first-time elected MPs were joining Douglas Alexander who, after nine years’ absence, found himself back in a front-bench position, along with Michael Shanks, an MP for less a year, who now had a post in the Department of Energy.
Ian Murray, unsurprisingly, had been quickly confirmed as the Secretary of State for Scotland. These three excepted, there were no old hands to teach the new MPs the ropes and guide them through the challenges of being a Scottish MP in the UK Parliament.
More from this author
From the ‘marketisation’ of care services to the closure of cultural venues and criminalisation of youth, a new Red Paper reveals how austerity has weakened communities and disproportionately harmed the most vulnerable, write PAULINE BRYAN and VINCE MILLS
There is little benefit coming to Scotland or the wider UK from projects like Rosebank or Jackdaw – or indeed renewables – as profits are siphoned out of the country by foreign companies, writes PAULINE BRYAN
Unwanted, imposed Tory interventions on Scotland fuelled demands for devolution, and today Labour risks repeating past mistakes if Ian Murray seeks to bypass Holyrood on spending, warns PAULINE BRYAN
With a lack of radical thinking from the Starmer-led UK government, support for Scottish independence is unlikely to evaporate any time soon – spelling trouble ahead for Anas Sarwar, argues PAULINE BRYAN
