YANA PETTICREW explains what’s behind the strike and how the entire sector rests on super-exploiting an unorganised workforce

PETER MANDELSON, Britain’s ambassador to Washington, embarrassed Keir Starmer’s government by demanding Ukraine’s President Volodymr Zelensky should give “unequivocal backing” to Donald Trump’s “peace” plan directly after Trump humiliated Zelensky in public.
But Mandelson’s outburst was completely consistent with his general approach of agreeing with the most powerful men in the room — especially US presidents — and seeing Putin’s Russia as a business opportunity, not a dangerous authoritarian government.
After Trump mauled Zelensky in the Oval Office, Starmer and other European leaders made a show of supporting the Ukrainian president. But Mandelson told ABC News that Zelensky should be “giving his unequivocal backing to the initiative that President Trump is taking to end the war.”

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

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

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