News and Opinion

RICHARD PORRITT with this week’s big stories The comrades are massing on the south coast for the Labour Party conference – but hidden by the raucous renditions of The Red Flag the whispers of division continue. With the McDonnell rule – meaning leadership contenders only need the support of 10% of their peers, not 15% […]

Scotland’s three biggest parties have all experienced sudden jolts in recent weeks. MAURICE SMITH reports on the tectonic plates shifting once again north of the border The three leading women of Scottish politics have discovered, of late, a variation of the old adage that a week is a long time in politics. Several can seem […]

A fitting 48 times the hapless foreign secretary, currently backtracking from his bungled attempt to topple Theresa May, outraged with his thoughtless comments and ill-judged actions 1) During the London Riots of 2011 it took mayor Boris Johnson three days to return from holiday in Canada. He said: “I came as fast as I could.” […]

The Lib Dems have stepped back from the Brexit cliff-edge. The party, voting with its head rather than its heart, decided to retain the policy it’s had since June 24 last year – calling for the people to have a say (via a referendum, including an option to remain in the European Union) on any […]

We have a number of set phrases in English which we use in a rather automatic and semi-obligatory way at particular times and in specific social situations – such as ‘good morning’ and ‘good evening’, ‘happy birthday’ and ‘happy new year’. There are rules about how to use these formulae. We can say ‘good afternoon’ […]

Despite its devastating impact, Hurricane Irma passed with only a handful of deaths yet received wall-to-wall media coverage. On the other side of the world, floods have left a far higher death toll, yet reporting has been sparse. LIZ GERARD asks what is behind this apparent hypocrisy and what it says about us Eleven dead […]

Full disclosure: I’ve never drunk a glass of beer before in my life. Until this summer in Scotland. Before that, beer was the stuff in cans that my Dad and his cronies drank while watching the Chicago Cubs lose another baseball game. It was the drink guys guzzled while drifting in canoes down the Great […]

Sir Vince Cable is to set out his bid to scupper Brexit by declaring ‘I am a proud saboteur’. Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable during a question and answer session during the second day of the Liberal Democrats Autumn Conference at the Bournemouth International Centre. – Credit: PA Wire/PA Images In his maiden conference […]

Imagine a town studded with watchtowers like San Gimignano in Tuscany, but set high on a plateau, 100 miles from the nearest centre of population. Towering above it are virtually impenetrable snow-capped mountains. The only access is either by small plane or a road which snakes high above a river, fed by 200 metre waterfalls. […]

A top Brexit Whitehall official has been moved out of the Department for Exiting the EU amid rumours of a rift with David Davis. Oliver Robbins has left Brexit Secretary Davis’s department to an advisory role in the Cabinet Office but will ‘continue to lead the official-side UK team’ in negotiations, a Government spokesman said. […]

The venerable Dr Johnson described patriotism as ‘the last refuge of the scoundrel’. In our times, political scoundrels use nationalism as their last refuge, spiked with bitter xenophobia, and throw in some handy cynicism. They impugn migrants, refugees, immigrants, and people of colour. They upbraid powerless outsiders for the ills of this splintered, ungovernable nation. […]

In 1972 Ziggy played guitar, Marc Bolan hit his stride and blokes across Britain made nervous moves towards their sister’s make-up bag. Here SOPHIA DEBOICK rediscovers glam Britannia David Gilmour of Pink Floyd performs on stage, London, 1972. (Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images) – Credit: Getty Images The events of the year were notoriously dreadful. […]

Spiced sauces are a constant in my life, whether it’s the go-to Caribbean Encona Pepper Sauce at the back of the cupboard, the perennial Tabasco or any other hot sauce with the magical ability to elevate even the most modest cheese sandwich to the higher echelons of eating. I suppose the bar is set differently […]

Home Secretary Amber Rudd today accused her Cabinet colleague Boris Johnson of “back-seat driving” as the row over his Brexit intervention deepened. She publicly slapped down the Foreign Secretary after he used a 4,000-word essay in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph to set out his personal vision for post-Brexit Britain just days before the Prime Minister delivers […]

I couldn’t make it to the March For Europe last Saturday; perhaps this dereliction of duty means my Remoaner licence has now been revoked and I must now be demoted to Regrumbler or Rewhiner. But, it just so happens, I think the weekend’s events may have rendered all such terms obsolete. I’ll explain: Some bright […]

In his latest exploration of the wonders of European languages, former QI writer Adam Jacot de Boinod unearths some surprising terms for food and dining. Dokhlaya sobaka, (Russian) a low- quality frankfurter (literally, a dead dog). Hasenbrot, (German) a sandwich that has been taken to work or school and is now rather stale (literally, a […]

‘Trees are sanctuaries,’ wrote the German author and poet Hermann Hesse. ‘Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth.’ Hesse’s words are prime example of how Europe has always attached a vivid mystique to its trees. Myths and legends across the continent are based in […]

BONNIE GREER on the conviction that you can have your cake and eat it Like all questions that history deems to have ultimately been about a nation’s identity, its very soul, Brexit has quickly become a measure of more than itself. The pro-EU march on Westminster last weekend turned out Middle England, that bellwether of […]

At 11am on the morning of April 26, 1937, a reconnaissance plane circled over Guernica in the Basque region of Spain. The town’s people were nervous. Guernica’s strategic importance was obvious, if the city fell to Franco’s forces then the Basque coastal region would be next and the Nationalists would soon have north Spain under […]

A legitimisation of radical right-wing ideology is taking place around the world. The world was shocked by the events in Charlottesville, America, and by Donald Trump’s failure to condemn racist violence. But it may be even more surprising to some to learn that the radical right has achieved a mainstream foothold in Scandinavia and that […]

MICHAEL WHITE on the coming post-EU withdrawal bill vote storm and what happens now we get into the detail Never boring, is it? Monday night’s second reading vote on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill may only have been classified as a Category 2 storm which passed through the House of Commons with limited damage to […]

If Theresa May had made her ‘citizens of nowhere’ speech a few years earlier, she would probably have received a letter of stern rebuke marked Kardamyli, Greece. William Stanley Moss, General Kreipe, Patrick Leigh Fermor – Photograph The Estate of William Stanley Moss reproduced by permission Royalties from the sale of these photographs of William […]

RICHARD PORRITT with the week’s big stories So to Bournemouth and Sir Vince Cable’s debut at Liberal Democrat conference as leader. ‘We need to give people power over the decisions which affect their lives,’ he says in the foreword to the conference programme. Some might say giving the public a say got us into this […]

Vodka – The clean, clear spirit is an essential ingredient in many a classic cocktail. And its image as the drink of purists is helped by the efforts of one of its biggest manufacturers. Sweden’s Absolut is the third largest alcoholic spirit brand in the world, and second only to Smirnoff in the vodka rankings. […]

Mancunian musician Mark Reeder arrived in Berlin in 1979 and never looked back. Mark Reeder. Picture: Archant – Credit: Archant In the four decades since he made the city his home he has managed bands, staged clandestine gigs behind the Iron Curtain, released his own records, remixed countless others, starred in films, presented television shows […]

Britain will “soon regret” leaving the EU, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has warned in his annual state of the union speech. He told the European Parliament that although Brexit would be a “sad, tragic” moment the remainder of the union would “move on”, setting out moves for closer economic and defence co-operation. The “wind […]

In 1968 the German rock band Can hid themselves away in the Schloss Nörvenich, a castle which was not that far from their hometown of Cologne and while there they began to experiment, rehearse and record their first LP Monster Movie. The members of Can came from disparate musical backgrounds. Two of them, keyboard player […]

It was almost 35 years ago yet I still can’t believe my dad let me do it. I can’t have been much more than 14 years old. I was desperate to visit my favourite cousins in Dublin and I think my parents had probably jumped at the chance to get rid of me over that […]

Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un are playing a very dangerous game of nuclear poker, argues Paul Connew. But does either leader have the cards that could avoid destruction? There’s an obscure 12-year-old promotional video in which Donald Trump pontificates ‘expertly’ on how to win at poker. Later he admitted he wasn’t an expert at all […]

Right, so where are we now then? When last we spoke, Keir Starmer had give us perhaps the first hint that Labour might be starting to back away from at least a ‘Hard’ Brexit, if not (yet) Brexit altogether. Nothing much else (at time of writing) seems to have happened on that front; Labour appear […]

When Muslim feminist SEYRAN ATES opened a liberal mosque in Berlin this summer she was met with a barrage of death threats and fatwas. But she says she is undeterred in her campaign to use enlightenment values to defeat extremism – in all forms I have been beaten up in the street, received death threats […]

Writer, April 17, 1885 – September 7, 1962 In New York in the spring of 1959 Karen Blixen danced on a table with Marilyn Monroe and fellow novelist Carson McCullers. At least, that was according to McCullers’ version of events: while the three certainly met it’s unlikely the frail, sickly Blixen would have been tapping […]