Apart from a bright spark of hope in the victory of the Gaza motion, this year’s conference lacked vision and purpose — we need to urgently reconnect Labour with its roots rather than weakly aping the flag-waving right, argues KIM JOHNSON MP

LABOUR are — rightly — doing well out of the growing “second jobs” scandal in Parliament: the MPs with big-bucks-second-jobs and the ones who have tried to influence the government for their paymasters are overwhelmingly Tory.
Boris Johnson’s ham-fisted attempt to get Owen Paterson off for breaking the rules has led to anger about how far MPs are allowed to moonlight for corporations within those rules and calls to tighten the rules.
Keir Starmer’s team have pressed on how Conservative MPs are helping their corporate friends and themselves, not the voters. They’ve done it with more vigour than we are used to, which is good.

The new angle from private firms shmoozing their way into public contracts was the much-trumpeted arrival of ‘artificial intelligence’ — and no-one seemed to have heard the numerous criticisms of this unproven miracle cure, reports SOLOMON HUGHES

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