News and Opinion

Migrant bashing is trending again. In virtual and real public spaces, anti-migrant hostility is palpable. I am a migrant. Treat me with respect. Et tu Jerry? The Labour leader, a lifetime defender of migrants and asylum seekers, now apparently believes the ‘wholesale importation’ of hard working migrants from Central Europe has destroyed working conditions for […]

Oil-rich Venezuela’s dream of fashioning a better society through a third way between communism and capitalism has turned into a nightmare with riots on the streets. Slum area in San Cristobal, Venezuela. – Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto When the bearded former philosophy professor who was Venezuela’s Ambassador in Moscow handed me his AK-47 and explained President […]

Since Brexit there has been a spike in homophobic hate crime. What are the reasons behind the worrying trend? It is 50 years since the first major gay rights reform in British history. The Sexual Offences Act 1967 decreed that, in England and Wales, it would no longer be illegal for two men over the […]

International Trade Secretary Liam Fox has denied the Chancellor’s claim there will be three years of continued free movement after Brexit. Hammond had claimed there was ‘broad acceptance’ in Cabinet of a post-Brexit transitional period lasting up to three years. But speaking to the Sunday Times Fox said that any such move would ‘not keep […]

One hundred years ago, on July 31 1917, saw the start of the slaughter in that hell they called Passchendaele. Here’s why the battle still exerts such a hold on the national psyche… Carrying a wounded soldier to a first aid post, Passchendaele, Belgium, World War I, 1914-1918 – Credit: The Print Collector / HIP […]

What is at stake and what needs to change to ‘save the country’? I write these words in the warm autumn of the antipodes, where incredulous Australians and dismayed, distressed and unhappy British expatriates look at the farce, the lunacy, of Brexit from afar, and shake their heads. I tell them that Brexit will collapse […]

The Liberal Democrats need a spark. And Sir Vince Cable can provide it. Vince Cable, if he plays his cards right, has a chance to take his still shell-shocked party and make it the natural political home for all who believe Brexit is set to be an unmitigated disaster. To do so he’ll have to […]

It is 50 years since a huge breakthrough for gay rights in the UK – the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality It was a summer evening in 1954 and the home secretary, David Maxwell Fyfe, was travelling on the Liverpool to London sleeper train. His accompanying security detail passed him a note from a man called […]

Did you spot the Canadian angle on the British government’s latest Cunning Plan, the one intended to make good Theresa May’s pledge to leave the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice on Brexit Day without doing serious ‘no deal’ harm to the economy? I don’t blame you, it was tucked away inside the Sunday […]

Our culture correspondent on Antonio Banderas, the Spanish actor who switched his European career for a Hollywood one. Antonio Banderas – whose latest action movie Security (in which he plays a security guard protecting a female witness to a crime) is currently showing across the UK – is a versatile, crowd-pleasing actor who is seen […]

Richard Porritt, Steve Anglesey and Geri Scott tackle the week’s news and crown another Brexiteer of the Week all from the comfort of The New European library. .

Another week, another great issue packed with news, Brexit analysis and brilliant features on art, culture, film and food 1. Michael White on how progress in UK/EU talks has hit an impasse over the ECJ 2. Bonnie Greer: When the target is ‘the Others’ we should all be worried 3. Paul Knott on how Venezuela […]

We pick the worst Brexiteers of the week Viscount Rothermere The owner of the Brexit-worshipping Daily Mail is pondering taking the paper’s HQ to Dublin to avoid the worst effects of Brexit, according to his friend the Duke of Marlborough. Jamie Spencer-Churchill told The Times: ‘He’s thinking about moving his whole operation to Ireland’. Surely […]

The US is stumbling towards an autocracy, as it emerges Donald Trump is exploring ways to pardon himself even before any accusations have been made. Pardon me for sounding apocalyptic, but the world’s greatest democracy this week staggered further along the road to a constitutional catastrophe that would make Brexit look like a vicarage tea […]

Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer has insisted that no options for Brexit should be off the table in the latest sign of Labour splits on the issue. Sir Keir told senior business figures that it was ‘vital’ to obtain the benefits of the single market and the customs union and ‘how we achieve that […]

‘The Will Of The People … Once upon a time, I would have thought the phrase absurdly un-British’ In a brilliant essay entitled The Reichstag Fire Next Time, the Russian American writer, Masha Gessen, argues that totalitarianism has already arrived in the United States. It merely takes an event – one real or created – […]

Does Sean Spicer have the biggest tale to tell? Could Sean Spicer, the human sponge White House press spokesman who resigned after the appointment of new Communications Director Anthony ‘The Mooch’ Scaramucci, have the biggest ‘Whistleblower’s Tale’ of all to tell? So far, Spicer has maintained his loyalty to the president, but there is no […]

Britain’s funniest politico Steve Coogan talks Corbyn, Grenfell and how Alan Partridge is a rabid Hard Brexiteer. Steve Coogan is enjoying a revolutionary moment inspired by ‘the metaphor of Jeremy Corbyn’s jacket’. Corbyn’s clothing choices – which ‘show authenticity’ – occurred to Coogan during the election, when he joined the Labour leader on the campaign […]

I find I’m just as uncomfortable with sneering schadenfreude when it’s our ‘side’ doing it as when it comes from the opposition. Young Christian Americans sometimes wear a bracelet around one wrist inscribed with the letters ‘WWJD?’ This of course stands for ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ and is intended to help them clarify their thoughts […]

The New European has finally decided to publish one of persistent Brexiteer Robert Miller’s letters. But was it worth the wait? Brexiteer and prolific letter writer, Robert Miller – Credit: Archant Had The New European ever seen fit to publish any of my letters, or, indeed, had any of my letters to the newspaper been […]

Robert Miller, the Brexiteer who keeps writing to us without being published finally gets his say in The New European A selection of the many emails received by The New European from Robert Miller – Credit: Archant THE NEW EUROPEAN: Who is Robert Miller? ROBERT MILLER: Well, I’m 49 and am currently in Liverpool. And […]

The tragic drowning of French philosopher Anne Dufourmantelle while trying to rescue two stricken children has prompted tributes from across the globe. Michel de Montaigne once wrote an essay arguing ‘that to philosophise is to learn to die’. By reflecting on our finitude and the human predicament, he said philosophy teaches us both to accept […]

There are encouraging signs for bears across Europe. But for one subspecies – numbering only around 50 – the situation is particularly perilous. Efforts are being made to find out more about this isolated population right in the heart of Italy. It’s hard to believe that just a few hours drive from Rome, a small […]

Let’s get talking In the 1970s, for my final year of high school, I was an exchange student in the United States. The mother of the family I lived with was a registered Republican; she’d once run for mayor of the upstate New York town in which she lived. Her sister lived in Washington DC, […]

The story of the Bosnian War is also the story of its football clubs which were ethnically cleansed along with the population For tens of thousands of refugees displaced by the war in Bosnia and Hercegovina 25 years ago, the first painful hours after being ejected from their homes were often spent in football stadiums. […]

Infuse cream with cinnamon, cardamon and star anise for an Indian inspired twist on the classic French dessert I’ve never been made about the third course. Two Starters Hardeep was what they might have called me. The late noughties was the defining decade for me when it came to puddings. Having assembled a cultured coterie […]

That the entire Brexit Project may now lie in the domain of Elmer Fudd would be what Bugs would make us question. The Trump administration is being compared to a Bugs Bunny movie; a Cheech and Chong film, or a ‘dumb-ass comedy’ (Robert de Niro). As with Star Wars, I got the point of Cheech […]

The haunting image of a ruined city is nothing new. Here we examine the horrors of urban warfare from Stalingrad to Mosul 1941: Red Army troops storming an apartment block amidst the ruins of war-torn Stalingrad during World War II. (Getty Images) – Credit: Getty Images Heinrich Böll, one of the few German novelists to […]