As politicians put on a patriotic pantomime, a whole generation feels alienated from a country that no longer seems to work for them. St George’s day (April 23) generally marks the start of a peculiar season in British politics. Debates over English identity and patriotism are re-ignited and rehashed anew. Politicians play tug-of-war with a […]
Péter Magyar is inheriting the ruins of a democracy Orbán spent sixteen years hollowing out. Will Britain learn Hungary’s lesson the easy way or learn our own the hard way? Viktor Orbán conceded defeat on Sunday 12 April after sixteen years, after four consecutive supermajorities, after rewriting the constitution and redrawing the maps and packing […]
I was in a chemist in Grantham the other day, and got talking to the pharmacist dispensing my prescription. It is one of the blessings of my Irish stock that I am predisposed to strike up conversations with strangers – something I have always done and something I always will. Why? Because I have lost […]
Who shoulders the burden in the end? Not those profiting from the needs of ordinary people. Last week I was given an update on my long-awaited shoulder replacement (originally planned for last August, then December, then possibly January, and then March): at my ‘consent’ appointment with my surgeon I was given the bad news that, […]
The scene: Exeter’s Hampton by Hilton hotel, which accommodates asylum seekers: a Saturday afternoon during the second half of 2025. There’s a small gathering of people nearby, some draped in Union Jacks, one waving the flag of the neo-fascist, anti-Muslim Britain First movement. A woman is bawling ‘Stop the Boats’, and a man in a […]
With the government of the United States currently in the care of a vulnerable adult, open to manipulation by those around him, we need to consider what happens when he is allowed to die. Throughout the current Trump presidency, we are seeing many of the signs displayed in Brezhnev’s final years as leader of the […]
The UK Labour government was elected with a perfectly reasonable diagnosis that the country was in urgent need of national renewal, and that this could not be delivered overnight. They nevertheless promised to start the job of delivering the change the country needs. We are now almost two years into the term of the government, […]
Kier Starmer, we are told, is no Winston Churchill – although, one may ask, why would he want to be one? Equally, Donald Trump is no Eisenhower. With Eisenhower as Supreme Allied Commander, the planning of Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa, and of Overlord, the invasion of Europe, centred not just on getting […]
We are very happy to share information on two events that form part of a global grassroots rejection of authoritarian, kleptocratic and fascistic regimes. BRISTOL EVENT: What’s your beef? Stop Trump and defend democracy On Saturday, March 28, 2026, the grassroots group Americans for Action (‘AfA’) and Indivisible SW UK will jointly hold a peaceful […]
I don’t know about you, but I am sick of the political narrative being dominated by the far right and I am sick of this government allowing Reform UK to colour or even, seemingly, dictate policy. The Overton window has been pushed so far to the right by the client media and the (historically) main […]
Former Labour MP Tom Watson wrote a detailed analysis of the result of the February 26, 2026 by-election in Gorton and Denton, titled ‘A Party can lose and still learn nothing’, which really needed a reply. I agree with Watson that letting Andy Burnham stand would have risked Labour losing the by-election and then losing […]
This is no longer a distant conflict. It is at Europe’s door. On March 4, everything escalated again — and this time it hit a NATO member state. IRAN FIRES A BALLISTIC MISSILE TOWARD TURKEY Wednesday March 4 2026, Iran fired a ballistic missile that travelled through the airspace of Iraq and Syria before heading […]
Dear Anna I have long been disgusted by the indisputable fact that South West Water wilfully and regularly dumps sewage as a profitable policy. I was again reminded of this as I watched the TV drama ‘Dirty Business’, and the scale of it is even worse than I ever imagined. SWW are not only committing […]
Politically speaking, I am an uncomfortable hybrid, something between an ostrich and an idiot savant. I don’t watch the news for daily, hourly tidbits of frustration and terror. I don’t know each incident comprising the ongoing catastrophe that is Trump’s madness, but I know what’s going on. I don’t need endless examples: in fact, I’d […]
The government’s Representation of the People Bill, introduced on 12 February, has been hailed as the biggest expansion of democratic participation in a generation. Cleaner political finance rules and automated voter registration are welcome reforms which will strengthen election integrity and make participation in elections easier. But we should be honest about what this Bill […]
Dear Anna [Gelderd] The Gorton and Denton by-election results clearly show that the current Labour stance of trying to ape Reform is not wanted by the electorate. Labour needs to change course, start taxing the rich, massively invest in public services and bring previously privatised aspects of public utilities back into public ownership. We don’t […]
One of the most memorable American films I have seen, albeit many years ago, was Mississippi Burning (1988). Its producer was Frederick Zollo, and no, he is no relative of mine, so far as I know, but was married to Barbara Broccoli, famous for some of the Bond films. Mississippi Burning is based loosely on […]
Nearly ten years after the referendum, the numbers are in. And they’re devastating. The economic carnage Multiple independent studies published in 2025 have reached the same brutal conclusion: By 2025, Brexit has reduced UK GDP by 6 to 8 per cent. That’s £240bn per year that our economy has lost. Not “might lose.” HAS LOST. […]
Easily missed in the sea of political chaos that is Westminster today, there is a diamond in the rough: Britain actually has positive elections legislation on the docket in Parliament. Imagine that. I’ll tell you what I like about the Representation of the People Bill (RPB, formerly referred to as the Elections Bill) – and why, given […]
Let me tell you what’s happening in Germany right now – and why the UK should be paying very close attention. In Germany: The AfD is under heavy surveillance. In May 2025, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency – the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV) – officially classified the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) as a “confirmed right-wing extremist […]
A pedestrianised small-town high street in the southwest of England on a Friday or Saturday morning. Each of our group begins our conversations in different ways, but mine usually go something like this. Me: Would you like to stop for a quick chat? Passer-by: What’s it about? Is this a political party? (Why is this […]
Let me say at the beginning that I am not a fan of Keir Starmer’s administration. It has all too often been clumsy and muddled, and it needs a course in communication skills. However, it has understood and accepted one absolutely basic fact of contemporary British life that both the Conservatives and Reform UK refuse […]
It’s no secret that the political right in Britain largely takes its cues from Donald Trump. They regurgitate MAGA’s culture-war talking points, recycle the same influencers and Roman-statue ‘X’ accounts, and – in Reform UK’s case – directly import disastrous schemes like Elon Musk’s DOGE. Trump says jump; they ask how high. So it’s not […]
Dear Editor, Trump’s every word, every garbled utterance is catapulted round the globe as though he were the oracle, he the saviour of the world. How did it come to be that this orange man-child can spew such hatred, instil such fear, and everyone stops to listen? I hope that we will be able to […]
My grandparents on my mother’s side were Geordies from the North East of England, born and bred, but on my father’s side were born in the Austro-Hungarian empire. My grandfather from Hungary and my grandmother from Austria, just off the Danube – Rembrandtstrasse – just a short walk from the University. Cultured and deeply integrated. […]
…and quicker than most of us thought it would. Trump wants Greenland. And he is prepared to blackmail any country that stands in his way. Of course, the claim that the USA needs Greenland for national security is nonsense. Under the 1951 Greenland Defence Treaty – which allowed the USA to have its base at […]
A journalist, without completing the checks, nor indeed any of the paperwork, was, to their astonishment, approved online for a job as an ICE agent anyway – intentionally demonstrating for their magazine that literally any unvetted person could be appointed. By implication also demonstrating any kind of racist, rapist, felon with a grudge or an […]
The Nazis relied on a set of post-hoc rationalisations after casual, sanctioned murders, that combined elements of legal manipulation, propaganda, and let’s call it, moral inversion. The aim wasn’t just to excuse violence, but to redefine it as lawful, necessary and virtuous. For the Night of the Long Knives, Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt argued that […]
On Tuesday Jan 6 2026, seven European leaders issued a joint statement on Greenland that reads like a masterclass in how democracies should respond to authoritarian overreach. Clear principles. Unified front. No hedging. But within hours, the White House responded by raising the prospect of military force to get their way. So much for bullies […]
It feels as though 2025 has been another tough, ugly year and worse than the last. Empowered by Trump, Musk and a large portion of the media, racism, misogyny, environmental destruction, fascism, cruelty and greed proudly strut the world stage, trampling the vulnerable and attempting to silence opposition. It is tempting to disngage from this […]