British Politics

RICHARD PORRITT on the week’s big stories ‘Shut up and do as you are told or the Commie bastard on the opposition benches will send us all back to the 1970s’ appears to be the Whips’ latest line of attack on Tory Remainers. But why the paranoia? Even rogue Remain Tory Anna Soubry admitted that […]

As I think I’ve mentioned before, my wife Clara (who is in the process of becoming my ex-wife although we remain best of friends – a neat trick if you can pull it off and thus far we seem to be doing OK) grew up in Berlin both before and after the reunification of Germany. […]

It’s not who you are underneath it’s what you do that defines you When a character has been around as long as Batman (78 years, Batfact fans) it’s interesting to examine the differences, both broad and subtle, between the various iterations – both in print and especially, on screen – of the Caped Crusader’s adventures. […]

I don’t blame the Scots if Brexit leads them to want another shot at independence I have a bit of a confession to make; I very nearly didn’t get this article in on time. I’d like to pretend that this was because I was engaged on urgent business; swept away on some vital errand of […]

I’m banging the drum for the people being allowed to make an informed choice One can scarcely even begin to wonder at the thoughts which passed through the mind of young Lieutenant Commander John McCain during his long years of imprisonment and torture in Vietnam, but I’m going to go out on a limb here […]

The democratic principle merely holds that the wishes of the majority should, where practicable, be upheld. It says absolutely NOTHING about whether the majority is RIGHT You may recall that a couple of weeks ago I began my column by making the declaration that Julia Hartley-Brewer is a nice person (just one who believes, and […]

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 […]

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 […]

Really Theresa May? Consensus? With the ‘saboteurs’, the ‘enemies of the people’? Say what you like about George Orwell, but the man was even-handed in his scorn for political thuggery: having been shot in the throat while fighting as a volunteer against Franco’s fascists in the Spanish Civil War, he then came home and wrote […]

Both will be as bad as the other. Julia Hartley-Brewer is a nice person. There, I said it. No, really; I’ve worked with her a few times over the years on various radio things (although last time we actually conversed on Twitter she insisted she had no idea who I was, which is entirely possible) […]

Less than two weeks after blowing £130 million on an election which served nobody’s interest but theirs, the Tories somehow laid hands on another BILLION. When you’ve been in the entertainment business since your early 20s (and your early 20s are a dim memory receding even more quickly than your hairline) you never know what […]

You can’t have a negotiation when you have literally nothing the other side wants It’s become clear over the course of the last twelve months (has it really only been a year? The pre-Brexit era seems like some dimly remembered Halcyon Age these days) that much as there are people who have no idea how […]

The Conservatives have been exposed as the opportunistic self-serving incompetents that they are. Like many Corbyn-sceptics I’ve been bombarded with messages this last week demanding I issue some sort of grovelling apology for having said Jeremy Corbyn would lose the election. There’s one thing I feel I should point out in my defence: Jeremy Corbyn […]

If the Vice President and a majority of either Congress or the Senate decide that the President is no longer fit for duty, he’s out. I sometimes feel a little semi-detached from my own emotions. Like I’m observing everything which happens to me – and moreover, how I feel about it – at a remove. […]

The thing that has made the Conservative Party the most formidable election-winning machine in political history is also its fatal weakness; its blithe assumption of authority. It may come as a surprise to those of you who only know me from this column to be told that politics is not the abiding obsession in my […]

Starve of attention those who can’t keep their mouths shut This article originally appeared in The New European on May 26 As the aftermath of the atrocity in Manchester is being picked through both literally and figuratively, I don’t have anything useful, insightful or helpful to say on the subject. I could join in with […]

Embracing political identity on a tribal level can lead to disastrous decisions A staunchly left-wing friend of mine tweeted earlier this week that they were clinging to the vague (but still existent) hope that Labour could turn things around in the short time remaining before the election, that, in her words, ‘we might win’. I […]

The game is back on… and you have to ask why? Well I did NOT see that coming. Literally; as you may even remember, in an early column I dismissed the notion of Theresa May calling a snap election before 2020 as I could see no electoral advantage for her in doing so. What’s changed? […]

Lies, fibs, untruths… in the end the truth about quitting the EU will be revealed Ever told a lie? Yeah, me too. Not for quite a while, though. Because I’ll tell you what I haven’t done; while I’ve told a few lies in my time, something I’ve never done is got away with telling a […]

Triggered or not, Article 50 makes no difference to our fight So, it has come to pass. Our PM, guided as always by the voices in her head, has fired two proton torpedoes through the two-metre wide exhaust port of Article 50 and set off the chain reaction of bureaucratic and economic explosions which will, […]

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, […]

Ok, we got Brexit, but at least Britain doesn’t have to put up with this ‘War on Christmas’ nonsense Merry Christmas.Yeah I said it. Merry Christmas. If Christmas is something you do, Merry Christmas, and if you do something else, Merry Whatever It Is You Do, and if you do nothing, be merry doing that. […]

Could the battle of left versus right be a thing of the past? So I’ve got a new MP; as I’m sure you will have heard, last week Zac Goldsmith managed to lose a majority of 25,000 in Richmond Park to be unseated by the endearingly gobsmacked-looking Liberal Democrat candidate Sarah Olney. This has been […]

The rejection of expertise, the rejection of facts, embrace of sweeping, ill-informed opinions – welcome to the age of the oaf Nigel Farage (2014) – Credit: PA Archive/PA Images If ever there’s a picture to sum up our times it’s the one disseminated widely last week of Donald Trump and Nigel Farage standing together looking […]

So Jeremy Corbyn was, entirely un-unexpectedly, re-elected leader of the Labour Party and was feted (and immortalised in verse) by an adoring membership in my old hometown of Liverpool. Like most politically unaffiliated liberal intellectual smart-arses, I am unsure how I feel about this. The major objection one encounters to The Corbyn Project is his […]