British Politics

RICHARD PORRITT with the week’s big stories So to Manchester and the final party conference of the season – Conservative. Not many people expected Theresa May to be giving the leader’s speech in the wake of the general election disaster but she’s made it and is determined to reassert some authority. And one government aide […]

MICHAEL WHITE on Tory treachery, Lib Dem ambition and a week of serpentine manoeuvring in Westminster Another momentous week, another object lesson in how events, chance and human agency collide in unpredictable ways to produce profound consequences. Who could have predicted that cautious Angela Merkel’s decent instincts towards refugees – every German family knows first-hand […]

STEVE ANGLESEY rounds up the losers and losers (because there are no winners) of another crazy seven days on Planet Brexit 10 Russell Brand Asked on Newsnight if he supports Brexit, the increasingly precious former comedian replied: ‘To be honest, I source my emotional connection to politics beyond those kind of parameters.’ Sadly, Rusty later […]

A new far right is on the move with a simple, scapegoating message. ANTHONY CLAVANE reports At the end of this month UKIP will elect a new leader at its party conference in Torquay. Anne Marie Waters, a founder of the far-right nationalist group Pegida UK, is one of the favourites to succeed Paul Nuttall. […]

MICHAEL WHITE on the painfully slow realisation dawning on the Tories that Brexit is complicated and requires compromise How deeply irritating it must have been for travelling Theresa May constantly to be distracted all week from the draft of Friday’s ‘vision thing’ speech in Florence by the sight of her priapic Foreign Secretary wildly waving […]

Steve Anglesey rounds up the losers and losers (because there are no winners) of another crazy seven days on Planet Brexit 10 John Rees-Evans Desperate to bring some momentum to his flagging UKIP leadership challenge, Rees-Evans retweeted a Twitter poll asking people to name their favourite candidate. He cheekily asked his followers to ‘Vote Early, […]

RICHARD PORRITT with this week’s big stories The comrades are massing on the south coast for the Labour Party conference – but hidden by the raucous renditions of The Red Flag the whispers of division continue. With the McDonnell rule – meaning leadership contenders only need the support of 10% of their peers, not 15% […]

In part one of our exclusive extracts from his latest diaries, ALASTAIR CAMPBELL reveals how Tony Blair and Gordon Brown fought over the future of the Labour Party, and what they both made of the rise of David Cameron – and chronicles his own rapidly deteriorating mental health Saturday August 6, 2005, France Sky News […]

25 years ago, on Black Wednesday, the Conservative Party was busy making a mess of the UK’s relationship with Europe. DAVID WARD, who was adviser to Labour’s then leader John Smith, looks back to see what lessons can be learned to stop the current government doing the same again It is an anniversary the Tories […]

RICHARD PORRITT with the week’s big stories So to Bournemouth and Sir Vince Cable’s debut at Liberal Democrat conference as leader. ‘We need to give people power over the decisions which affect their lives,’ he says in the foreword to the conference programme. Some might say giving the public a say got us into this […]

STEVE ANGLESEY rounds up the losers and losers (because there are no winners) of another crazy seven days on Planet Brexit 10 Michael Caine The 84-year-old actor told an audience at the Venice Film Festival that he supported Brexit because ‘I’d rather be a poor master of my own fate than a rich servant of […]

Right, so where are we now then? When last we spoke, Keir Starmer had give us perhaps the first hint that Labour might be starting to back away from at least a ‘Hard’ Brexit, if not (yet) Brexit altogether. Nothing much else (at time of writing) seems to have happened on that front; Labour appear […]

MICHAEL WHITE on the Brexit-obsessed UK’s diminished international status as the EU looks to tackle its own problems Was Michel Barnier right to threaten British voters with ‘an educational process’ about the grave consequences of leaving the EU’s single market? Was Theresa May right to tell reporters during her trade trip to Japan that she […]

Theresa May’s insistence that she is sticking around as PM may have been met with scepticism and incredulity, but PR agent MARK BORKOWSKI argues her reboot may yet work Theresa May stunned many in Westminster when she expressed her desire to lead her party into the next general election. After the almighty stumble of June’s […]

British identity is fragmented like never before, with the rise of pop-up populism dividing people into ‘them’ and ‘us’. Author PETER POMERANTSEV takes a deeply personal journey through Britain to find out what it means for the country I used to think the British were different: that if anyone in the world knew who they […]

For comedian MITCH BENN, Theresa May’s attempts to extend her political life put him in mind of his favourite film, Blade Runner. Here, he goes on the trail of Downing Street’s replicant They don’t advertise for killers in a newspaper. Not this newspaper anyway. They advertise attractively reduced rate subscriptions, framed signed copies of the […]

STEVE ANGLESEY picks out the worst Brexiteers of the week 10 Peter Whittle ‘Great to speak tonight at @UKIP Norfolk hustings,’ tweeted the favourite to become the Kippers’ next leader, after talking at an event last weekend. ‘This is a party with a strong beating heart.’ And who can doubt it when you see the […]

RICHARD PORRITT on the week’s big stories ‘Shut up and do as you are told or the Commie bastard on the opposition benches will send us all back to the 1970s’ appears to be the Whips’ latest line of attack on Tory Remainers. But why the paranoia? Even rogue Remain Tory Anna Soubry admitted that […]

As I think I’ve mentioned before, my wife Clara (who is in the process of becoming my ex-wife although we remain best of friends – a neat trick if you can pull it off and thus far we seem to be doing OK) grew up in Berlin both before and after the reunification of Germany. […]

It’s not who you are underneath it’s what you do that defines you When a character has been around as long as Batman (78 years, Batfact fans) it’s interesting to examine the differences, both broad and subtle, between the various iterations – both in print and especially, on screen – of the Caped Crusader’s adventures. […]

I don’t blame the Scots if Brexit leads them to want another shot at independence I have a bit of a confession to make; I very nearly didn’t get this article in on time. I’d like to pretend that this was because I was engaged on urgent business; swept away on some vital errand of […]

I’m banging the drum for the people being allowed to make an informed choice One can scarcely even begin to wonder at the thoughts which passed through the mind of young Lieutenant Commander John McCain during his long years of imprisonment and torture in Vietnam, but I’m going to go out on a limb here […]

The democratic principle merely holds that the wishes of the majority should, where practicable, be upheld. It says absolutely NOTHING about whether the majority is RIGHT You may recall that a couple of weeks ago I began my column by making the declaration that Julia Hartley-Brewer is a nice person (just one who believes, and […]

I find I’m just as uncomfortable with sneering schadenfreude when it’s our ‘side’ doing it as when it comes from the opposition. Young Christian Americans sometimes wear a bracelet around one wrist inscribed with the letters ‘WWJD?’ This of course stands for ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ and is intended to help them clarify their thoughts […]

Robert Miller, the Brexiteer who keeps writing to us without being published finally gets his say in The New European A selection of the many emails received by The New European from Robert Miller – Credit: Archant THE NEW EUROPEAN: Who is Robert Miller? ROBERT MILLER: Well, I’m 49 and am currently in Liverpool. And […]

Really Theresa May? Consensus? With the ‘saboteurs’, the ‘enemies of the people’? Say what you like about George Orwell, but the man was even-handed in his scorn for political thuggery: having been shot in the throat while fighting as a volunteer against Franco’s fascists in the Spanish Civil War, he then came home and wrote […]

Both will be as bad as the other. Julia Hartley-Brewer is a nice person. There, I said it. No, really; I’ve worked with her a few times over the years on various radio things (although last time we actually conversed on Twitter she insisted she had no idea who I was, which is entirely possible) […]

Less than two weeks after blowing £130 million on an election which served nobody’s interest but theirs, the Tories somehow laid hands on another BILLION. When you’ve been in the entertainment business since your early 20s (and your early 20s are a dim memory receding even more quickly than your hairline) you never know what […]

You can’t have a negotiation when you have literally nothing the other side wants It’s become clear over the course of the last twelve months (has it really only been a year? The pre-Brexit era seems like some dimly remembered Halcyon Age these days) that much as there are people who have no idea how […]

The Conservatives have been exposed as the opportunistic self-serving incompetents that they are. Like many Corbyn-sceptics I’ve been bombarded with messages this last week demanding I issue some sort of grovelling apology for having said Jeremy Corbyn would lose the election. There’s one thing I feel I should point out in my defence: Jeremy Corbyn […]

If the Vice President and a majority of either Congress or the Senate decide that the President is no longer fit for duty, he’s out. I sometimes feel a little semi-detached from my own emotions. Like I’m observing everything which happens to me – and moreover, how I feel about it – at a remove. […]

The thing that has made the Conservative Party the most formidable election-winning machine in political history is also its fatal weakness; its blithe assumption of authority. It may come as a surprise to those of you who only know me from this column to be told that politics is not the abiding obsession in my […]