Opinion

The Greensill scandal has exposed long-running tensions caused by a decision to allow business interests into the corridors of Whitehall In May 2010, Gordon Brown left a handwritten note to David Cameron, the incoming prime minister, with a simple message: “The country is in good hands. Jeremy is running it.” Nine years later, Brown’s telling […]

The prime minister has miscalculated on the current sleaze scandal and it will cost him dear During the Brexit referendum, among the pleading emails I occasionally sent to David Cameron’s team were several urging them to hit back far harder against the lies being told by Boris Johnson and the Leave campaign. There were two […]

A United Ireland does not mean simply assimilating the North into the Republic. Everything must be on the table Despite all the contemporary difficulties that we face on this island, and indeed across these islands, 23 years on from the signing of the Good Friday Agreement there is a clear sense of hope for a […]

Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo has the profile and ambition to run against Emmanuel Macron for the French presidency. But her greatest strengths might also be what prevents this ‘Queen of the Bobos’ from reviving the country’s moribund Socialists Despite not yet having declared her candidacy for next year’s presidential elections, mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo […]

Keir Starmer's time will come - but he must start to take risks.

The scandal surrounding David Cameron’s lobbying lays bare exactly what is meant by ‘selling off the NHS’ Seen from afar, the running saga of David Cameron’s efforts to meet with every minister in the UK (and beyond) on behalf of his clients can be a strange one. To even a casual observer, it seems like […]

The New European editor-in-chief and Liverpool fan MATT KELLY on the pain and confusion caused by his club’s actions My wife doesn’t understand me.  The events of this week threw me into a deep funk from which I have yet to recover. The unprecedented headaches I began to suffer on Monday can’t have been just a coincidence. […]

The Super League farce may be over, but the conflicting interests of owners and fans mean more trouble ahead. Not even Niccolò Machiavelli, the grandmaster of deception, could have foreseen the manner in which English, Spanish and Italian clubs attempted to carve up European football. “I’m not interested in preserving the status quo,” Machiavelli wrote […]

The Russian president is testing the resolve of the West, but in doing so he reveals his weakness rather than his strength.

What will happen to police reform in America following the verdict over George Floyd? Another day. Another African American man faced the police. This time it was 20-year-old Daunte Wright, driving his car through Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. Wright was pulled over by cops and a female officer shot him dead. It happened 10 miles away […]

TANIT KOCH on the traumas of moving house in Germany, the country where everybody rents. I’ve moved house. One of the more humiliating experiences, I find, is walking through an empty, well-kept flat alongside a facility manager who inspects it and points to three minor spots in a corner behind the door, condescendingly asking you […]

The tiny football club of Eibar has defied gravity by staying in the top flight for six years. But its luck looks like finally running out. Never mind the ongoing travails of FC Barcelona, another, sadder, story of downfall in Spanish football is being played out, as the end of the La Liga season nears. […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on an actress whose later years have fascinated every bit as much as her relatively brief screen career. They always called her a recluse but that wasn’t strictly true. Greta Garbo lived not out of sight but in the heart of Manhattan where it’s impossible to disappear. She was a regular attendee at […]

Researchers argue the divides in England are even stronger than between the different nations of the United Kingdom. For many of us, a national identity is an essential part of who we are. For others, it’s a source of division. National boundaries, like any boundary, imply that some are on the outside. As long as […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK on the music of the Mexico capital. Some places are so alive with their own internal mythology that their music speaks of little else. Chilangos, the contested term for the denizens of Mexico City, have played out a love affair with their city in popular song over the last half century, but music […]

It has been a gloomy week on the sunlit uplands of sovereign Britain… unless, of course, you’re an irony lover who enjoyed Boris Johnson explaining why English football clubs were wrong to want to leave an established, successful European set-up on the vague promise of more riches elsewhere. Boris might not have followed that thought […]

The Tories are on course to face their worst defeat of a candidate for the London mayoral race since the office was created Polling shows Sadiq Khan is set to secure a second term as London mayor on May 6. He is easily beating his Conservative rival, Shaun Bailey, who looks likely to suffer the […]

TIM WALKER on meeting Billy Graham. As a venerable democracy, Great Britain used to take a somewhat condescending view of America and the way she liked to wave her flag and loudly profess her faith in God. It wasn’t that we were by and large unpatriotic or ungodly, but we just felt that we’d reached […]

Journalist Rob Hughes was ignored when he claimed a link between heading footballs and dementia nearly 50 years ago – and the authorities are still to act properly Pardon the cynicism, but when the UK parliament in February finally set aside time to listen to doctors and former professional footballers about dementia in our national […]

PETER TRUDGILL on the curious process by which neutral phrases for ‘smell’ tend to turn bad. It is rather well known to keen crossword solvers that the English words aroma, odour, scent, smell and stink all have five letters. Crossword clues indicating a five-letter olfactory answer can therefore not be readily resolved without further work and thought. A good question […]

The diplomatic incident which left Ursula von der Leyen without a chair in her meeting with the Turkish president revealed more than just protocol problems. It exposed deep tensions not just between Europe and Turkey but within the EU itself It was a day of bounty for memes, hashtags and headlines when European Commission president Ursula von der […]

Britain needs its theatres back because Britain IS theatre – a country obsessed with role-playing When I stumbled on the English National Opera’s rendition of Handel’s Messiah recently and watched it for a while, I suddenly burst into tears. There, in the empty London Coliseum where the ENO were performing amidst the shadows of the empty […]

Bill Kenwright’s Love Letters and the National’s After Life have announced opening dates – but a full return for the London stage seems as far away as ever As a theatre critic, I am sometimes asked when am I going to start reviewing theatre again. It is not an unreasonable question, especially now that there appear […]

Will Self looks at the differences between the mourning for Princess Diana and Prince Philip – and the Vanuatu tribe who worshipped the Duke of Edinburgh To Buck House, to check out how the collective hysteria was manifesting itself in the wake of Phil the Greek’s demise. There were cut flowers lined up along barriers […]

Britain’s slack system for regulating politics is responsible for a devastating lack of public trust. If he were a more sympathetic figure, David Cameron would have a certain air of pathos about him – the longer he lives, the worse his reputation gets. Born to riches and elected to the highest office in the UK, everything since […]

The pandemic might finally be giving the party a purpose, but it will also highlight the tensions of its dual heritage of economic liberalism and social democracy For the first time since the last election the Liberal Democrats are getting some national attention. In his unqualified opposition to vaccine passports and some of the other pandemic constraints […]

Former Conservative politician Alan Duncan’s new memoir In The Thick Of It contains much criticism of Boris Johnson – but why didn’t he say this earlier? “NOW YOU TELL US” OF THE WEEK Former Conservative politician Alan Duncan, whose new memoir In The Thick Of It (can’t imagine where he came up with that title) […]

Misunderstood and mischaracterised by the rest of the UK, the plight of Northern Ireland’s Unionists, trapped between London and Dublin, is a melancholic one The Unionist identity in Northern Ireland has always been a difficult one for outsiders to understand. The stock images that travel so reliably abroad – of towering bonfires and Orangemen in bowler hats […]

In this second extract from his new book on fairness, BEN FENTON asks how it affects the way we see politics, and how societies have dealt with coronavirus. When did you last vote? At an election? For an MP? A mayor? A president? Perhaps in a referendum? Or did you fill in an online survey about […]

A very limited review has been set up to look into the Greensill lobbying affair – do not expect much from it. Alexander “Lex” Greensill, formerly of Morgan Stanley, is clearly a forceful and persuasive personality. The Autralian farmer-turned-financier was adviser to the government from 2012 to 2015, during which time, he appears to have […]

AMS or STV could bring electoral reform to Britain - and still bring us a step closer to full PR.

IAN DUNT on what the death of the Duke of Edinburgh tells us about our country. The royals help define an age. It doesn’t matter if you support the monarchy, couldn’t care less about it, or want to overthrow it. As long as they’re there, they become part of the country’s sense of self. They […]