News and Opinion

Our attitude to celebrities has got to change – for their sake, as well as ours, says former tabloid journo and celeb hunter Being a celebrity makes you into a giant man-baby, reducing your capacity to be a fully-formed human. To be an impeccable celeb brand, with a long shelf-life, you must renounce important parts […]

As the first post-Brexit Burns Night looms, Hardeep Singh Kohli finds himself rekindling the Auld Alliance Last Monday I found myself at The Poor School in London’s ever changing King’s Cross. My co-writer and dear friend Maddy Anholt was starting the first of half a dozen evening workshops on the comedy of improvisation. She’d asked […]

The Government has lost its battle over triggering Article 50 and must now seek a vote in Parliament PA Wire/PA Images – Credit: PA Wire/PA Images Theresa May remains determined to trigger Article 50 before the end March despite losing a bruising Supreme Court battle over Brexit. By a majority of eight to three, judges […]

Theresa May’s version of Brexit is the opposite of what she and her allies were seeking just a few months ago Optimism in politics is always an attractive quality and Theresa (‘certainty and clarity’) May’s exposition of her goals for Britain’s EU Brexit negotiation displayed a well-crafted example of that quality in the gilded splendour […]

The Prime Minister’s speech has set Britain on course for an ultra-Hard Brexit. Three things, and only these three, were made crystal clear in Theresa May’s plan for Brexit. One is that she and the Brexit claque are determined on an ultra-Hard Brexit. The second is that she is determined to deprive Parliament of an […]

The government’s Brexit strategy is a betrayal of values that has stunned Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron If 2016 felt like a never-ending cycle of shocks and surprises, then 2017 already shows no sign of relenting. As a liberal and a progressive, in a week where the Prime Minister confirmed her intentions for a Hard […]

Few US presidents have entered the White House amid such extraordinary tumult. Former Fleet Street editor Paul Connew describes the start of what will be a unpredictable four years for the world Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary Michael Gove during the Dinner to Her Majesty’s Judges hosted by the Lord Mayor of the City of […]

The irony of Theresa May choosing Davos to make her first foreign defence of taking Britain out of Europe is that the Swiss are going in exactly the opposite direction. Three years ago in a referendum in Switzerland on immigration, the Swiss narrowly voted to ban Europeans entering to work in the country. A quarter […]

Today is a big day for Mitch Benn; it’s his birthday. But he also has a message for those concerned by the presidency of ‘he who must not be named’: Stop clutching your pearls If you’re reading this article on its day of publication, it’s my birthday. On January 20, I turn 47 years old, […]

The American Dream belongs to every US citizen, but Donald Trump has denied it to many. As he is sworn in to office, Bonnie Greer remembers her earlier protest against another ‘Strong Man’ president I went to my first Washington protest in the Nixon era. The anti-Vietnam War organisation that was sponsoring us had organised […]

Brexit was meant to light a fire under Europe and spark populist revolts across the continent. In fact, it has united it as never before – and reduced the UK to being the butt of jokes After June’s British vote to leave the EU the mood music across Europe seemed inescapable: emboldened by the UK’s […]

For months, Labour has been pressing the Prime Minister to disclose her Brexit negotiating objectives. When we won an Opposition Day motion last December calling for a plan to be published, it became inevitable she would have to do so. Yet on Tuesday we got a speech, not a plan. That is no substitute. The […]

*Spoiler* It’s not great 1. ‘It will take all the ‘stiff upper lip’ symbolized by Queen Victoria to overcome the economic storm unleashed from the British leaving the European Union’ – La Stampa, Italian newspaper 2. ‘The recent resignation of Sir Ivan Rogers as permanent representative to the EU is not merely a diplomatic anecdote. […]

Think the north London, Merseyside or even the notorious Old Firm derbies are the pinnacle of footballing rivalries? Europe’s football hooligan clashes will shock you Players of Greek football club Panathinaikos cower behind riot police for protection from objects and flares thrown by rival Olympiakos Piraeus fans. – Credit: AFP/Getty Images The blood and thunder […]

The ‘special relationship’ between the US and the UK has long been unbalanced. Brexit will tip the scales completely in favour of the Americans and enfeeble Britain The British Ambassador to the US, Kim Darroch, says that he plans to make Prime Minister Theresa May and incoming President Donald Trump’s partnership as close as the […]

We shouldn’t be surprised about the sudden emergence of populism. Illiberalism has deep roots. And we’ve allowed it to grow Over the course of last year, several commentators claimed that we were witnessing a ‘new xenophobia’, the product of an all-too-visible populism. Oxford University Professor and Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government, Ngaire Woods […]

There is a thriving market for paintings by Adolf Hitler. But if the works are not valued for their artistic merit, just what is the attraction? Painting by Adolf Hitler painted in Munich just before World War One, 1914 – Credit: World History Archive / TopFoto Ever owned a masterpiece of a renowned artist? A […]

Are we safe with a pro-Putin, anti-EU, NATO-sceptic in the White House? Will the president-elect’s promised trade deal really be quick and fair? And are we safe with a pro-Putin, anti-EU, NATO-sceptic in the White House? These are the two main takeaways from Donald Trump’s interview with Michael Gove. Trump said: ‘We’re gonna work very […]

Labour and the Tories are now marching, hand in hand, towards a Hard Brexit Six months on from the EU referendum, the country is faced with a divisive Tory Brexit government, an NHS being stretched to breaking point and huge uncertainty over our economic future. At home we see values that have long underpinned our […]

Britain will pursue a Hard Brexit and quit the European single market when it leaves the EU, Theresa May has confirmed. Outlining her plans for Brexit the Prime Minister said she was willing to sacrifice access to the single market if it requires the free movement of people and the jurisdiction of the European Court […]

Brexit is the result of an English delusion, a crisis of identity resulting from a failure to come to terms with the loss of empire and the end of its own exceptionalism, argues Cambridge University professor Nicholas Boyle There is a great lie peddled about the referendum: that it expressed the will of the British […]

Former leader of the 1968 student protests. Daniel Cohn-Bendit explains what links those protests to Brexit and Trump, where the EU has failed and the simple way it can succeed Daniel Cohn-Bendit is the European par excellence, the one whose details might have been given to Henry Kissinger when the former American Secretary of State […]

Dany Cohn-Bendit est l’Européen par excellence. Celui dont on pourrait donner les coordonnées à Henry Kissinger quand l’ancien secrétaire d’Etat américain persiflait de sa fameuse phrase : « L’Europe : quel numéro de téléphone ? » Né en France de parents juifs allemands, ancien leader du mouvement étudiant de Mai 1968 à Paris, ancien adjoint […]

These refugees used freedom of expression take back control Hastily constructed rooms with no roofs or doors served to give each family some privacy. A skirting board of black paint was created to give the central corridor visual consistency and cover scuff marks. (Daniel Soll�) – Credit: Archant Distressed by the tragedies unfolding from the […]

Donald Trump, like Barack Obama before him, is an actor and Meryl Streep played the role of the critic. Playwright Bonnie Greer on an unfolding American drama Piers Morgan ends his assessment of Meryl Streep’s Golden Globes speech with the following: ‘How much more effective would it have been had the most powerful woman in […]

What Brexit Britain desperately needs is a clear message from the Opposition, but the Labour leadership continues to heap chaos on top of confusion Business likes certainty. Markets like clarity. Politicians who have been painted into a tight corner, often by their own careless brushstrokes, prefer a bit of latitude, even freedom to change the […]

Jeremy Corbyn thinks we overdid the control freakery, says Labour’s spin doctor, but he must realise – after that flawed relaunch – that voters need to know exactly what you stand for I am confused. Given the mini-avalanche of tweets, emails and generally exasperated messages from like-minded friends and colleagues that flowed from Jeremy Corbyn’s […]

Whether the allegations are all fake news or not, mix and match by taking one from each column to create your own Trump scandals… quickly, before they actually happen Pick one from each column to create your very own scandalous story – Credit: Archant Trump fake news generator Click me Tweet us your favourites @theneweuropean