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

NEXT year will be the 20th anniversary of the 2003 Iraq war. This means this year is the anniversary of multiple fake news stories about Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD). It took a whole year of untrue stories about Saddam Hussein’s secret germ bombs and nuclear weapons to promote the war.
We will get quite a lot of media attention around the war anniversary — much accepting that the Iraq invasion was a bloody failure built on lies and some trying to justify the disaster.
But we have very little media attention on the fake stories before the war — because that would mean the media looking at failures by the media, and that just won’t happen.

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