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

SHARED ownership was supposed to be an “imaginative” housing solution pushed both by New Labour and Cameron’s Conservatives, but a recent article in online magazine The Lead says the “situation is so desperate that the plight of shared owners may well be the next big housing debacle.”
Shared ownership is for people who want to buy a flat but can’t afford ever-rising property prices. So you try and “own,” say, 30 per cent of your flat, paying rent for the remaining 70 per cent.
It’s meant to be a bridge between renting and buying. Maybe over time you can buy bigger shares of your flat and slowly join the respectable property-owning classes.

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