Despite the adoring support from Elon Musk and Donald Trump, Javier Milei’s radical-right free-market nightmare is unravelling, and the people are beginning to score major victories against the government in the streets and in elections, reports BEN HAYES

PRIVATISER Serco held private talks with Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and other shadow cabinet members before the election about getting more work from a Labour government, according to comments made by its chief executive at this month’s Labour conference.
Reeves previously publicly condemned Serco and promised to reverse public-sector outsourcing, but it looks like Labour has now abandoned these positions.
Serco chief executive Anthony Kirby was addressing a Labour conference fringe meeting that his firm paid think tank Demos to organise. Thanks to funding the meeting, discussing Labour’s “missions” and “public services,” Kirby was on the panel for the event. He told the meeting, held in a 40-seater room in Liverpool’s Hilton hotel, that “before the election we were really excited by some of the conversations we had with Sir Keir and Rachel and some of the shadow cabinet.” By Rachel, he meant Rachel Reeves, so it looks like Serco’s boss is on first-name terms with the Chancellor.

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