The NEU kept children and teachers safe during the pandemic, yet we are disgracefully slandered by the politicians who have truly failed our children by not funding a proper education recovery programme — here’s what is needed, explains KEVIN COURTNEY

TORY MP Jake Berry leads the Northern Research Group, the Conservative MPs who claim to know what voters in former Labour seats in the north really want. It turns out Berry thinks they want a fresh dose of Thatcherism.
They want deregulation and they want businessmen taking over local government, in a plan that was put together with the help of a giant bank with a history of big public subsidies and squeezing the “little” people.
This February, Berry co-wrote a widely reported policy pamphlet published by the Thatcherite Centre for Policy Studies — it called for a Northern Big Bang. You wouldn’t think northern voters are clamouring for Thatcherism, with what that did to the north last time, but Berry thinks otherwise.

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