News and Opinion

A majority of Remainers and Brexiteers would be prepared to see Northern Ireland leave the Union in order to achieve their preferred Brexit outcome, a survey has found. Around four in 10 Britons said they cared little or not at all about the region. Unionists in Belfast are opposed to prime minister Boris Johnson’s proposed […]

Nigel Farage has said the Brexit Party will not contest the 317 seats won by the Conservatives at the last general election. Speaking to supporters in Hartlepool the politician said he had taken the decision because he feared that if they had run it would have led to a hung parliament with significant gains for […]

PETER TRUDGILL on how languages come up with the words their culture requires and uses snow as an example. My German-English dictionary says that the German word keltern is to be translated into English as ‘to press (of grapes)’ (for the purpose of making wine). The word comes originally from Latin calcatura, ‘stamping’, which is […]

JAMES BALL on how the Brexit Party leader has become Remain’s secret weapon. As Tammy Wynette so nearly sang, sometimes it’s hard to be an attention-seeker. So we should all spare a thought for poor Nigel Farage, who if he were any normal entry-level attention-seeker would be on the horns of an absolutely intractable dilemma […]

ALASTAIR CAMPBELL on how the issue of Brexit is overshadowing the general election campaigns. There are so many factors swilling around in this election, I fear the stress and anxiety that Brexit has brought into our lives will rise to a whole new level. It used to be easy. You can have that lot as […]

Transport secretary has denied the government has delayed the publication of a report into Russian interference because it contains information that would embarrass the Conservative Party. Shapps instead blamed the “machinery of government” for the delay in publishing the report by the Intelligence and Security Committee. His comments come after The Times said that nine […]

Musicians have always reflected the two sides of Vegas, the glitz on the surface and the pathos that lies below. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. For a place that is a byword for hedonism, Las Vegas had humdrum beginnings. A Mojave Desert rest stop on the Old Spanish Trail trade route between Los Angeles and Santa Fe, […]

After claiming that Labour’s manifesto promises will cast taxpayers £1.2 trillion, the business minister would not give an equivalent figure for his own party. Kwasi Karteng said he won’t “bandy around figures” when he was asked what the Conservatives’ spending promises add up to. The Tories’ claimed figure for Labour, which took up the front […]

The former speaker John Bercow roundly criticised David Cameron’s ‘public school-instilled’ self confidence that led to calling for the 2016 referendum. Bercow said that the former prime minister “thinks people like him are born to rule” and that he only called the referendum because he thought it would “work for him”. After calling Brexit the […]

His 20 years in power have diminished his country, but Vladimir Putin seems more dominant than ever. GILES WHITTELL, a former Moscow correspondent, returned to Russia to examine the strength of Putinism. In September, a young St Petersburg lawyer named Alexandr Shurshev stood for election to the city council. He did well. He ran on […]

The leader of the Brexit party has decided not to show up to a scheduled interview after the rightwing paper the Daily Mail used its front page to beg: ‘Stand down, Nigel!’ Unfortunately @Nigel_Farage has pulled out of tomorrow's @RidgeOnSunday.So we will be having @theSNP's Westminster leader @IBlackfordSNP and @LibDems @SamGyimah on the show. @SkyNews? […]

The 1986 unsolved killing of prime minister Olof Palme still continues to obsess the Swedes. Roger Domeneghetti reports on how research by The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo author may provide a new twist. February 1986 in Stockholm was cold but not unseasonably so and on the night of Friday 28 people were out in […]

The Brexit Party says it stands behind one of its candidates embroiled in a row over his membership of a Luftwaffe-inspired heavy metal band. Dr Graham Cushway was a founding member of heavy metal guitarist for Stuka Squadron, a band billing themselves as “the greatest metal act consisting entirely of undead pilots of the Luftwaffe […]

As BONNIE GREER continues her look at each US state ahead of next years election she turns her attention to Colorado. There was a time when Colorado was a place where cowboys reigned, a fairyland where you lived on the Saturday afternoons of your childhood. This was way back at a time when it was […]

Health minister Matt Hancock has said there is ‘entirely a consistency’ when he was confronted with two opposing claims about Brexit border processes in Northern Ireland. Hancock was shown footage of the prime minister and the Brexit secretary contradicting each other on what the withdrawal agreement means for customs arrangements, and was asked to account […]

Parliament has dissolved and the general election campaigns have already yielded a crop of gaffes. How much have you taken in as the candidates flail about for your attention? – Got views? Or a pet who reads The New European? Write to letters@theneweuropean.co.uk

As the country commemorates 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, John Kampfner visits and finds the divisions of the past are still raw. Reiner Kneifel-Haverkamp is, by his own definition, one of the first adventurers. He had a solid job at the Foreign Ministry in Bonn. He had just returned from a […]

The Daily Mail has called on Nigel Farage to withdraw his Brexit Party from the general election over fears he could split the Leave vote. Its front page, saying ‘STAND DOWN, NIGEL!’, directs readers to write to their local Brexit Party candidates with the message: “I am urging you today NOT to stand in the […]

Baroness Warsi has struck out at a Tory minister after he said others in his party ‘take a more balanced approach’ on Islamophobia than she does. Health secretary Matt Hancock was asked about his party’s recent decision not to conduct an independent enquiry specifically into Islamophobia within their ranks, but into general “prejudice”. He said […]

With one year to go until the next US election, former diplomat PATRICK DAVIES finds political integrity under assault from all sides. In the midst of the presidential election primaries in spring 2016, I travelled to Las Vegas to watch Republican candidates on the stump vying for Nevada’s votes. After witnessing Marco Rubio whip up […]

The Brexit Party has been urged to drop a candidate after it was revealed he used to be part of a heavy metal band which was named and styled after Luftwaffe pilots. Graham Cushway (second left) in the band Stuka Squadron. – Credit: Archant Graham Cushway, who recently complained he was receiving ‘dog poo’ parcels […]

Independent candidate Dominic Grieve has told his supporters not to donate any more money to his general election campaign fund – as he has already raised more than enough. The former Tory, who was ‘purged’ from Boris Johnson’s party for voting to prevent a no-deal Brexit, told the Evening Standard that he has already raised […]

A Welsh Conservative candidate has faced online ridicule for a tweet he posted which showed the ‘mood to get Brexit done on the streets of Carmarthenshire’ – only no-one was there. Harvard Hughes’ original tweet, showing the ‘mood to get Brexit done’ in Carmarthenshire. Photo: Twitter – Credit: Archant Harvard Hughes was a Conservative candidate […]

Liberal Democrat MEP ANTONY HOOK addresses Euroscpetic claims that the EU was the reason the government didn’t bail out Thomas Cook. On the 23rd of September, one of the UK’s largest and oldest travel firms Thomas Cook fell into liquidation, putting over 2,000 staff out of a job. In the national outcry that followed, the […]

The leader of the Scottish National Party said her party will support a minority Labour government in a hung parliament if certain conditions are met. Speaking at the SNP’s general election campaign launch in Edinburgh on Friday, Nicola Sturgeon said alongside the right to hold a second independence referendum, further powers for Holyrood and increased […]

The Liberal Democrats reacted angrily to news that the BBC is set to host a head-to-head debate between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn – but not Jo Swinson. Dubbed the Prime Ministerial Debate, it will be hosted by Nick Robinson on December 6, and will follow a “seven-way podium debate” a week earlier featuring “leaders […]

The prime minister may have accidentally said remaining as members of the EU is better than leaving under his own arrangements, according to O’Brien According to LBC radio host James O’Brien, a video released of Boris Johnson ‘rambling’ after a day of campaigning in Northern Ireland shows the PM contradicting the government’s own Brexit position. […]

More than 50 Labour parliamentary candidates have signed a pledge stating they will campaign to Remain in a second referendum. Labour’s position had been to negotiate a new Brexit deal with the EU and then put it to the public for a second referendum within six months of being prime minister if he wins the […]