News and Opinion

A video of Nigel Farage thanking Steve Bannon and Breitbart for the Brexit referendum result has disappeared from YouTube following the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The short clip shows the former Ukip leader holding a pint of beer and saying: “Well done Bannon, well done Breitbart. You helped with this. Hugely.” Mr Bannon has deep ties […]

Far from saving the BBC, its prostrate position on Brexit could be the destruction of it, says ALASTAIR CAMPBELL All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.’ These words, most commonly attributed to the 18th Century Irish-born Whig Edmund Burke, may have come from someone viewed by some on […]

David Miliband’s latest Brexit intervention makes perfect sense – let’s hope people are listening. At the end of a week when some in the centre have dared to dream about a return for the best Labour leader the party never had, Miliband has warned that Brexit could land Britain in real danger. And he is […]

The sun has just risen, but the Colombian side of the Simon Bolivar International Bridge is already a mass of life. Families stand dazed with their luggage, as assorted hustlers and hawkers shout and prowl. Anyeli Flores and her friend Santiago Batista. Photo: Will Worley – Credit: Archant But among the swirling crowds, one man […]

The state of the parties with local elections looming, the SDP and Liam Fox’s magical socks. Richard Porritt, Steve Anglesey and Geri Scott round up another week in Brexit. In this episode the team take a closer look at where the parties stand as campaigning for the local elections begins and they ask if a […]

Thomas Harris encourages The New European readers to ensure their friends and family are all registered to vote in the local elections… Theresa May asked the electorate last year to endorse her hard Brexit posturing. It delivered no such endorsement but she has carried with it on regardless. May’s ministers have continued to ‘negotiate’ with […]

The role of the public clock in the development of our communities has been much overlooked, argues devoted horologist PIERS FORD, as he argues why they chime with all of us​ As a child, I had no idea that everybody felt a little bit proprietorial about Big Ben. I didn’t know that when people spoke […]

Former foreign secretary David Miliband has again called for a second Brexit referendum, warning global instability since the 2016 vote has made it more dangerous for Britain. In an implicit challenge to Jeremy Corbyn to back a second vote, Miliband said it was ‘not good enough’ for Labour to join Conservatives in saying it is […]

In the 1940s, the Santa Monica house of the Austrian actress and screenwriter Salka Viertel and her screenwriter and director husband Berthold, became a literary and artistic salon for a community of exiled writers, artists, thinkers and scientists, who had all fled from the Nazis. Brotessender by Josef Scharl in 1930 – Credit: Archant Visitors […]

Knowing what we know now, how do we respond to Wagner and Woody? Changing cultural attitudes are forcing this question on all of us, says Bonnie Greer Walking through Tate Modern’s once-in-a lifetime exhibition, Picasso 1932 – Love, Fame, Tragedy, it is impossible not to think of the relationship of the genius and his muse. […]

Britain’s political heart is in the centre. The majority of Brits are not hard lefties or ring-wing extremists. The success of Tony Blair’s New Labour and – to a lesser extent obviously – David Cameron’s hoodie-hugging Conservatives prove the point. But currently we have a Tory party being driven from the backseat by a rabble […]

May’s local elections are a chance for the public to pass a verdict on the government’s handling of Brexit, Sir Vince Cable has said. The Liberal Democrat leader also urged voters to send a message to the Conservatives over “ideological” and “unnecessary” cuts to public services such as the police. Launching his party’s local elections […]

Comic book The Beano has written to arch-Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg accusing him of copying Dennis the Menace’s nemesis Walter the Softy. Taking aim at the Conservative MP Beano Studios warned in the mock legal note that his distinctive style is a rip-off of Walter and called on him to ‘cease and desist’. The Beano’s Mike […]

The latest allegations made about spending by Vote Leave during the referendum are gaining political traction. But it is worthwhile trying to leave the politics to one side, to concentrate, instead, on the claims from a legal perspective. Demonstrators at a Brexit protest march in Edinburgh, which is demanding a final vote on the Brexit […]

Silenced for too long, the cabby’s favourite station has given the Tory MP a regular pulpit to preach from For too long, the Tory MP has been persona non grata for most broadcasters. Choosing to focus on more moderate figures, the likes of the BBC, ITV and Sky have frozen out the Brexiteer to the […]

Deprived communities face a ‘disastrous’ future post-Brexit unless current EU funding is matched, MPs have warned the government. The annual £500 million European Social Fund provides for employment and skills training in communities that are poorly served or neglected by ‘mainstream’ support. A report by the Commons Work and Pensions Committee has warned that if […]

The blue passport fiasco rumbles on. Manufacturer De La Rue, which lost out to a Franco-Dutch firm, is threatening to take the government to court over losing the contract. De La Rue said it was the ‘highest quality and technically most secure’ option for producing the post-Brexit travel document, warning it was in the national […]

China’s out of control space station, which is set to come crashing out of orbit this weekend, offers an alarming metaphor for the possible trajectory of Britain’s multi-billion-pound space industry after Brexit. The sector, which is worth £14 billion a year and estimated to contribute £250 billion to the wider economy, was almost universally dismayed […]

‘If you thought the Ides of March have been bad enough, beware the Ides of May’ – the private words of one senior Trump-sceptic Republican senator with a passion for Shakespeare and a profound fear that all is not destined to end well. The Trump White House, of course, has long been depicted as a […]

So. Yeah. Easter. Bit of a weird one. For all that Easter is in many ways the direct counterpart festival to Christmas, the yin to Yuletide’s yang, as it were, it’s always been very much the junior partner. It’s just not as big a deal, for all that in theological terms the two festivals ‘bookend’ […]

Jeremy Corbyn having sacked Owen Smith, the leader of the opposition is now closer to the government on Brexit than to a majority of Labour MPs, and a vast majority of the members he claims to listen to. Keir Starmer having made clear that no matter what the deal, no matter what the costs or […]

The EU has more democratic checks than any other international structure we belong to. EU legislation requires approval both of those directly elected MEPs and of the Council, composed of national ministers accountable to national parliaments. The EU’s central administration, the Commission is headed by a team of Commissioners, each one nominated by the Prime […]

Tens of thousands of us march against Brexit in Leeds, Edinburgh, Brighton, Oxford and the rest making it onto the national news agenda. A handful of Brexiteers throw dead fish off a boat and the coverage is everywhere. This will shock some TNE readers but it isn’t an example of mainstream media bias against Brexit. […]

If there’s one playwright in this country that I think we’ve ridiculously over-indulged it’s Alan Bennett. What honestly can be said about our much-vaunted national treasure’s best-known work The History Boys, except that it’s an apologia for paedophilia? So many of Bennett’s plays – I think especially of Afternoon Off, with its hideous undertones of […]

Two contrasting images are likely to define the exact moment when Britain leaves the European Union at 11pm on March 29, 2019 – one year from now. Candles, as a tribute for the victims of the Manchester Arena attack, in Manchester, United Kingdom, Monday, May 29, 2017. Greater Manchester Police are treating the explosion, which […]

It’s hard to keep up with all these claims of plots and counter-plots swirling around the political system, isn’t it? Not just in embattled Brexit Britain but pretty well everywhere you look, and that’s no coincidence. Globalisation is the thread that runs through much of it – from US steel tariffs against China (the EU […]

In a one-year period since he was appointed foreign secretary, Boris Johnson has managed to rack up a £150,000 travel bill for taxpayers, covering just shy of 180,000 miles. My man in Whitehall says the air miles – they would stretch half way to the Moon – are testament to Theresa May’s ‘resolute determination’ to […]

Test yourself on the continent’s landmarks with our great Easter quiz Test yourself on Europe’s landmarks with our fiendish Easter quiz. Caution – it’s harder to solve than Brexit…

Ireland has always been the Achilles heel of Brexit because of three words: Good Friday Agreement. But as Theresa May has become more vague about the end state of Brexit, while being forced into ever tighter legal commitments for the immediate post-Brexit phase from next March, it has become the Achilles foot. The Good Friday […]

‘Exposure of Cambridge Analytica’s links with Vote Leave has obviously touched a raw nerve’ claims Anthony West. By crying foul at the Observer and Channel 4 and also haranguing journalist Carole Cadwalladr in the process, all Isabel Oakeshott did on the Marr show was to betray her anxiety that something was obviously amiss as far […]

Jeremy Corbyn’s dismissal of Owen Smith is yet more evidence that Labour is just as bad as the Conservatives when it comes to Brexit. Both are pursuing a disastrous Brexit with catastrophic outcomes as the end scenario. This is further illustrative of the long-standing fact that the 48% do not have a place in either […]

Facebook might seen like a humbled giant, right now. But make no mistake, its business model is never going to change, says PARMY OLSON. And that means people will remain products. ‘I started Facebook, and at the end of the day I’m responsible for what happens on our platform.’ This was the most sincere remark […]