News and Opinion

Nicola Sturgeon is planning to ignore Westminster’s veto on holding a second independence referendum, a leaked party memo has suggested. The National is reporting that SNP MPs Angus MacNeil and Chris McEleny will have their motion debate alternative legal routes to independence during this year’s party conference approved. Dubbed “Plan B”, the motion suggests Holyrood should take the UK government […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on Rene Goscinny, the French comic editor and writer, who co-created the Astérix comic book series. On January 20 this year a statue was unveiled in Paris on a patch of grass near the junction of Rue de Boulainvilliers and Rue Singer. It’s unassuming, some might say underwhelming: a podgy middle-aged man in […]

Dominic Raab has called for a fresh presidential election in Belarus following the “despicable” actions of Alexander Lukashenko, despite insisting it would not comment on the US elections. The foreign secretary highlighted findings by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) which he said “exposed the fraud at the heart of the presidential […]

Think you’re on top of what’s been going on across Europe in the past seven days? Take The New European’s tricky quiz and find out just how much of a Europhile you are…

PETER TRUDGILL on the likeliest roots of perhaps the world’s most used word. OK is one of the most successful English words of all time. It is a relatively new word – the first recorded usage dates from the mid-1800s – but it has now spread to all varieties of English around the world, and […]

Robert Buckland has blamed the public for a second national lockdown after suggesting a lack of ‘compliance’ was the reason for harsher coronavirus measures. The justice secretary said a “tiny group of people” had been breaking Covid-19 regulations and that there was a “huge challenge” to get the public to follow the rules this time around. Speaking with the BBC, Buckland: “Sadly, it’s been […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the poet responsible for a tragically slim collection of some of the finest verse in the English language. One hundred years ago this week a slim hardback volume of poetry was published in London by Chatto & Windus. Six shillings bought you a collection of 23 poems and a portrait of their […]

Tim Walker on how online is not what theatre should ever be about. The great theatre impresario Bill Kenwright used to get cross with critics who, having requested two tickets for an opening night, showed up on their tod. On such occasions, he took empty seats as an insult and understandably so. I thought about […]

For all his brilliance on the bike, Jacques Anquetil remained a remote rider. CHARLIE CONNELLY reports. The 1964 Tour de France was the first broadcast live on television. Until then, watching the Tour had involved standing at the roadside waiting for the riders to flash past in a whirring, panting blur of colour. Now, viewers […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK on the Minnesotan city and its most famous musical son. Minneapolis has always taken its own path. When Bob Dylan arrived in the city in 1959 from Duluth, 150 miles further north, he discovered that Minneapolis – the ‘City of Lakes’ – and its twin city Saint Paul were “rock and roll towns” […]

As cinema enters dark times, the 60th anniversary of À bout de souffle offers a much-needed reminder of film’s ability to revive itself, says JAMES OLIVER. The irony is almost too bitter. This is the 60th anniversary of Jean-Luc Godard’s À bout de souffle (Breathless, as it was translated, as it shall be hereafter), one […]

The Tate Modern and three US galleries have postponed a major exhibition of Philip Guston’s work, alarmed at his depictions of the Ku Klux Klan. Claudia Pritchard reports on a raging art controversy. In November 1970, the American avant-garde composer Morton Feldman went to see his artist friend Philip Guston’s new exhibition at the Marlborough […]

Globalisation might now be a dirty word for many, while U2 sometimes seem as disliked by an equal number. But, says IAN WALKER, at their finest the band capture a sense of optimism about the connected world. Commercially, U2 are as successful as any band could be. Over the last decade, they made more money […]

Andrew Neil has said he is enjoying his “new-found freedom” since leaving the BBC and used his final appearance on the news channel to criticise the SNP. Neil made the most of his presence on Politics Live to blast the SNP on the issue of poverty in Scotland. The now ex-BBC broadcaster claimed that people being “left behind” in parts […]

The prime minister will host a new coronavirus briefing as England entered a national lockdown for a second time. NHS chief executive Sir Simon Stevens will join the Downing Street event at 5pm on Thursday. It is unlikely that any new measures will be announced, but it follows chancellor Rishi Sunak revealing that furlough has […]

MITCH BENN on why he would almost be as bad as Boris Johnson. There’s a very useful expression which succinctly encapsulates the difference between the concepts of knowledge and wisdom. As is sometimes the case with such modern aphorisms, I’ve heard a few different versions of it, and I’m not sure with whom the phrase […]

John Kampfner, author of the much discussed Why the Germans Do it Better: Notes from a Grown-Up Country and a regular contributor to The New European, has written in the New Statesman that “monolingualism is one of the enduring motifs of British mediocrity”.  It is hard to query the basic accuracy of his observation, but we should probably […]

The Test and Trace system has reached the lowest ever proportion of contacts of people who tested positive for Covid-19 in England, a day after Boris Johnson said it had achieved a “remarkable feat”. Four in 10 close contacts of people who tested positive are still not being reached by the system, at the same […]

Labour has long been seen as a party of factions, while the Tories just had ‘tendencies’. But, asks TIM BALE, are the Conservatives now also splintering?  ‘You’re joking. Not another one!’ – not just Brenda from Bristol in the spring of 2017, reacting to Theresa May calling a snap election, but also Tim Bale (whose […]

In a deeply personal essay, writer PETER GUMBEL explains how the waning of national identities, combined with Brexit, has led him to reassess his own sense of who he is. November 9 is a day heavy with significance for my family: on that date in 1938, my maternal grandfather was arrested in his German hometown […]

Rory Stewart has called Boris Johnson the “most accomplished liar in public life” in a personal swipe against the prime minister in an article in the Times Literary Supplement. Stewart, who was of 21 rebel Tory MPs fired for voted against Johnson’s Brexit agenda last year, accused Johnson of being an opportunist who created the “historical forces” […]

STEVE ANGLESEY on how it doesn’t matter if Trump is in The White House in January as the intolerance, rage and loathing he has boiled up will remain. Everyone was surprised but them. As America’s election headed to VAR with the pollsters having got it wrong again, members of a British pro-Trump group on Facebook had […]

While all countries are grappling with coronavirus, France is also facing another profound crisis. JASON WALSH reports As France hunkers down for its latest coronavirus confinement, or lockdown – announced last week by Emmanuel Macron – the country knows it is heading into a period of unease, angst, economic devastation and death. And yet the […]

ALASTAIR CAMPBELL on how the UK government shows contempt of near Trumpian levels. Needless to say, the government’s fabled miscommunications team got itself into all sorts of muddles over its reaction to the Sunday Times’ revelation that the chair of the UK’s ‘vaccine task force’ briefed American venture capitalists on details of which projects the government was […]

Suella Braverman has defended Priti Patel’s attack on “activist lawyers” after reports they have faced physical and verbal attacks following criticism from the government. The attorney general was questioned by MPs about a Home Office video which accused them of epresenting migrants of trying to disrupt the asylum system. Labour’s Andy Slaughter also told the Commons: […]

A handful of Tory MPs have defied public opinion and their own party to vote against Boris Johnson’s lockdown plans. The prime minister’s bill sailed through the Commons by 516 to 39 in a vote on Wednesday evening. Under the legislation, non-essential shops will be forced to close and social gatherings and non-essential travel banned from Thursday […]

There was no shortage of critics for Rishi Sunak’s ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme when it became clear it may have contributed to the spread of the coronavirus. Still, the chancellor’s wife Akshata had good reason to applaud what he was trying to do. Mandrake can disclose that she was among the founder shareholders […]

MICHAEL WHITE on the growing twin nightmares of authoritarianism and incompetence in the week arch-opportunist Nigel Farage returns to frontline politics. Whatever the final outcome it was clear within hours of the polls closing that the result of the US election has not been the decisive repudiation of the Trump Era for which progressive opinion […]

CATHRIN SCHAER on the latest European country coming to terms with an atrocity. This week’s terror attack in Vienna was the first in the Austrian capital since 1981, when Palestinian gunmen stormed its main synagogue and killed two people. Monday evening’s atrocity was also the most murderous, resulting in four deaths and more than a […]

A Brexiteer has fumed about the possibility of Joe Biden entering the White House, claiming the loss of Donald Trump will hit the UK, and that any economic damage will be the fault of Remainers. Express commentator Paul Baldwin sparked anger from pro-EU campaigners after he said it was the “rabble of Remainer cohorts” who would […]

One of Boris Johnson’s ministers was left red-faced after he failed to say how many people had received a coronavirus test on Wednesday during an appearance on BBC Breakfast. Buckland, the minister for justice, suggested over quarter of a million people had been tested on Wednesday but had to quickly retract that statement when he […]

LIZ GERARD is second to no one in her criticisms of Boris Johnson. Yet for all his manifest failings, she cannot help feel some sympathy for his current predicament. But when anger starts turning to pity, how long can a prime minister last? At what point does anger turn to pity? Do we rediscover our essential […]