It is more than 20 years since the emergence of Tony Blair as Labour leader in the early 1990s led to the deliberate eradication of genuine, substantial difference between Britain's two main political parties.
Labour under Blair and the (...)
Fake news was one of the biggest themes of 2016, and US president-elect Donald Trump and his supporters on the alternative right were not the only culprits. Another important manufacturer of fake news was the British government, especially when it (...)
Let's embark on a mental experiment. Let's imagine that French Front National leader Marine Le Pen was on record as declaring that “Judaisation” was a threat to French civilisation. Let's imagine that she had told her far-right supporters that (...)
Karl Marx noted that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. This famous observation perfectly describes the West's recent interventions in Libya.
It is five years since the Anglo-French decision to remove (...)
Last month, Jeremy Corbyn was re-elected as Labour leader. It was his second victory by an overwhelming majority in a year, and it should have given Corbyn uncontested authority.
Yet he is still regarded with mutinous contempt by a significant (...)
I have just returned from the UK Conservative Party's annual conference in Birmingham, where I heard British Prime Minister Theresa May make the most nationalistic speech uttered by any recent British prime minister.
The Conservative Party angrily (...)
Very few political reputations, not even former UK prime minister Tony Blair's, have fallen as far and as fast as that of ex-prime minister David Cameron.
It is less than 18 months since Cameron pulled off a stunning general election victory against (...)
Let's try a mental experiment. Let's assume that the United States, supported by the United Kingdom, had not invaded Iraq. What would have happened? Granted, there can never be a definitive answer — but it's hard to imagine that the world would be (...)
How should British Muslims vote in the referendum that is being organised on the country's membership of the European Union? It shocks and worries me that I am having to ask this question at all.
I believe that British politics have benefited (...)
Lutfur Rahman, the former mayor of the London borough of Tower Hamlets, is today bankrupt, disgraced, almost universally despised and widely regarded as a crook, having been condemned by an electoral court for corrupt and illegal practices.
In (...)
Even before the formal announcement of Sadiq Khan's victory in the London mayoral elections, the recriminations among his opponents in the UK Conservative Party's high command had begun.
Andrew Boff, Conservative leader in the London Assembly, the (...)
Before the war you could have a leisurely breakfast in Syria's capital of Damascus and be in Aleppo in time for a late lunch at one of its famous restaurants.
Today, the fast, direct route to the city has been cut. For several weeks this winter, the (...)
France and civilisation are one and the same. Last week's attacks were not just attacks on Paris — they were calculated, prepared and nihilistic assaults on our common humanity. Today, all we can feel is grief, misery and shock.
Shock will change to (...)
I want to be fair to Mr Hague. He is Britain's cleverest and most hard-working foreign secretary since Robin Cook. He is the master of his brief. Unlike his dreadful predecessors, David Miliband and Margaret Beckett, William Hague recognises the (...)