News and Opinion

Born 200 years ago this month, Charles Baudelaire continues to inspire memes, musicians and even Monty Burns in The Simpsons. CHARLIE CONNELLY explains his remarkable relevance. The most famous image of Charles Baudelaire is a portrait taken in or around 1863 by the Parisian photographer Etienne Carjat. It was part of a series called Galerie Contemporaine, in […]

A former government chief scientist has accused Boris Johnson of privatising the NHS “by stealth” and operating a “chumocracy” which he claims led to the mishandling of the Covid pandemic. Sir David King said he was “extremely worried about the handling of the coronavirus pandemic” and the way in which public money was distributed to private […]

Women’s organisations are calling on the European Council president Charles Michel to resign over an incident that was dubbed “sofagate”.  Michel has been criticised for failing to do more to ensure that European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen was seated beside him and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at last week’s meeting, when the government in Ankara […]

A senior Conservative MP has claimed that parliament’s email system is less secure than Google’s Gmail as he warned China was attacking the UK’s democracy. Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Tom Tugendhat said parliament and the UK government needed to do more to defend democracy and freedom of speech. Tugendhat, who was targeted with sanctions by Beijing […]

Nick Clegg has said the EU has let itself and millions of Europeans down over its troubled Covid vaccine rollout. This comes as a new poll shows two-thirds of adults believe being outside the EU helped the UK’s vaccination programme to succeed. Clegg told LBC radio he thought “the EU has let itself down, more importantly […]

Northern Ireland is still a peacemaking success story. But 23 years after Good Friday Agreement, the region should be further towards reconciliation and social justice There is no mystery about the grassroots unionist anger that has led to street violence in Northern Ireland in recent weeks. Telling communities to be angry has been the political […]

UKIP has promised to hold a referendum on scrapping the Welsh parliament if it is elected in May. Its manifesto, launched Tuesday morning, also includes pledges to scrap measures to help asylum seekers and refugees in Wales, end the smacking ban and stop sex education in primary schools. UKIP Wales leader Neil Hamilton said it was […]

The UK government has referred two Bills passed unanimously by the Scottish parliament to the Supreme Court over concerns it is outwith Holyrood’s powers. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill and the European Charter of Local Self-Government (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill were passed in the weeks leading up to […]

Ministers are expected to face questions in the House of Commons over David Cameron’s lobbying activities on behalf of the collapsed financial firm Greensill Capital. Shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds has been granted an urgent Commons question calling on chancellor Rishi Sunak to explain how Greensill was granted access to a Covid loan scheme for businesses, […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the life of photographer Robert Doisneau, a man who portrayed Paris to the world and captured one of its most famous and romantic images. When a teenage Robert Doisneau first took a camera onto the streets of Paris he was so cripplingly shy that all he came back with were pictures of cobblestones. Gradually he […]

A scathing new report has accused Boris Johnson of “speaking for England alone” and having “considerable indifference” to the devolved nations. Research from the University of Cambridge’s Bennett Institute for Public Policy accuses Westminster of treating devolved administrations with contempt and handling the maintaining of the Union as “someone else’s problem”. The “Union at the Crossroads” document comes […]

Shirley Williams, the former Labour cabinet minister who broke away from the party to form the SDP, has died aged 90. In a statement Lib Dem leader Ed Davey paid tribute to Baroness Williams of Crosby as a “true trailblazer” who had inspired millions. As a Labour minister, Lady Williams, served in the governments of […]

Alex Salmond has said the SNP are showing a “lack of urgency” over Scottish independence. The Alba Party leader said they were going to tackle the “constitutional debate” following the suspension of the election campaign in the wake of the death of the Duke of Edinburgh. Salmond has made one of his first overt broadsides […]

For Ian Lavender, who played Private Pike in Dad’s Army, the magic of the series came from the way it was written to suit the actors’ personalities. By TIM WALKER. There have been 10 prime ministers since the first episode of Dad’s Army was broadcast, but the Guardian has suggested that the show resonates now more than ever because of […]

Significant differences remain between the government and the European Union over the operation of the Brexit deal in Northern Ireland, No 10 has said. Talks have continued between the two sides, with European Commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic and Brexit minister Lord Frost picking up the phone last week. But Downing Street said there are still […]

Boris Johnson has commissioned a wide-ranging independent review into Greensill Capital, the collapsed financial firm for which David Cameron lobbied ministers. Downing Street announced that lawyer Nigel Boardman is due to lead the probe, which will examine how government contracts were secured by the company and the actions of the former prime minister. Cameron accepted […]

Concerns about inequality in Britain is much higher than in any other European country, a new study has revealed. The end of lockdowns is in sight but the road out of these restrictions is only the start of a much longer journey to a full recovery from the pandemic. The crisis has ruthlessly exposed how […]

It is essential that lessons are not just identified, but robustly implemented to ensure the UK is more resilient to such events in the future. Where there is much to be positive about regarding the UK’s strong vaccine rollout, a public inquiry into how this pandemic has been handled in the country since the first […]

The government has been accused of rewriting chunks of its reports on racial disparities, an expert has claimed. Significant sections of the report published on March 31 – which has been widely criticised – were not written by the 12 commission appointed by Boris Johnson last July, the Observer reported. It also said none of the […]

A major voting rights effort is needed to ensure millions of people are not left off the electoral register, a campaign group has said. The Electoral Reform Society (ERS) warned that many people remain unregistered with only a week until the April 19 election registration deadline. It comes as figures published by the Electoral Commission […]

Gordon Brown has said former prime ministers “must never” lobby government for commercial purposes as he admonished David Cameron’s own efforts. The former prime minister also chided ministers who allowed Cameron to lobby them through unofficial channels.  Brown told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Former prime ministers must never be lobbying for commercial purposes. Current […]

A new cross-party group comprising of MPs, business leaders and economic exports is being established to provide independent scrutiny of the UK’s trade deals with Europe and the rest of the world. The Trade and Business Commission will be co-convened by Labour MP Hilary Benn and the chairman of Virgin Group, Peter Norris. It will […]

Leading pollster PETER KELLNER on the ways that public opinion on the issue has changed, and what it means for pro-Europeans. Two big lessons can be learned about public opinion since Britain’s agreement with the EU came into force in January. The first is that there has been a clear rise in support for Brexit. […]

The recent Dutch elections show how European politicians – and their electorates – can no longer separate EU affairs from national concerns. The recent Dutch elections kicked of a series of national parliamentary elections on the European continent: German elections are scheduled for September this year, followed by the French elections in May 2022. Given […]

David Cameron has defended meeting Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman during a business trip in January last year. The former British prime minister said he and scandal-hit financier Lex Greensill met the leader during a trip to the kingdom while advising on the country’s upcoming chairmanship of the G20. Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, […]

David Cameron has accepted he should have communicated with the government “through only the most formal of channels” as he acknowledged he made mis-steps over the Greensill Capital lobbying controversy. Breaking his weeks of silence, the former prime minister said in a statement that having “reflected on this at length” he accepts there are “important […]

Labour is preparing to heap pressure on Boris Johnson to act in the wake of the killing of Sarah Everard by pledging legislation to protect women and girls. Keir Starmer is planning to use what he believes is a watershed moment to press for the harassment of women on the street to become an offence […]

A year into his leadership, being ‘not-Corbyn’ is not enough. The Labour leader has to be visibly ‘post-Boris’. Here is some advice for the leader of the Labour Party from an unexpected source: “It’s odd, the Keir Starmer thing: he’s articulate, intelligent, good in the Commons, lots of common sense. But, for some reason, he […]