Opinion

In both Scotland and Catalonia, the sense of inevitability that independence would soon become reality has receded as quickly as it appeared. What changed?  As Nicola Sturgeon fights for her political life in the wake of the scandal tearing her party apart, her former counterpart at the head of the Catalan independence movement, Carles Puigdemont, has his own […]

TIM WALKER on being charmed by Lord Delfont. Lord Delfont has enjoyed something of a career renaissance in recent years, albeit posthumously. Sir Michael Gambon played the great showbusiness impresario as a thoroughly decent man in the film Judy – the Judy Garland biopic that had Renée Zellweger in the title role – and, the year before […]

Infection rates are on the rise in Germany – but the big debate in the country right now is about Easter holidays. I have a confession: I’m writing this column on a plane from Palma de Mallorca back to Germany, ready to join the country’s heated debate about… Mallorca. The island’s tourist industry is ready to […]

Sunderland’s indomitable party spirit is to be found in its exuberant 1990s girl band, and its very own drug-addled rave subculture. The atmosphere at the Blue Monkey club was almost physically tangible. The dancefloor filled with drug-fuelled revellers, lights and lasers roiling while ultra-high energy hardcore pumped out of the speakers, this old bingo hall on Sunderland’s […]

In the latest exclusive serialisation of his diaries, ALASTAIR CAMPBELL describes in heart-wrenching detail his son Calum’s battle with alcoholism, and the memories it prompted of his own similar ordeal. There are plenty of low points in this new volume of diaries, many of them very personal, and very difficult for both Fiona and me, namely […]

PETER TRUDGILL on whether Scots should be considered a language or not. My column of a few weeks ago, about how the Swiss are encouraged to learn their country’s various languages – and how something similar here might benefit the UK – annoyed reader Bill Cooper, who wrote to The New European to say so. His letter was published […]

It may not seem at the top of voters’ concerns but electoral reform offers a chance to tackle so many of the UK’s problems. Labour must seize it now, says MP Ruth Cadbury. In late September 2017, instead of heading to Liverpool for Labour’s annual conference, I was in Auckland getting voters out to the polls. Playing […]

The novelist considers the Japanese appreciation of all that is both imperfect and impermanent in the works of man and nature One of them is about twelve inches by eight, is entirely covered by a patina that ranges from light tan to black, and has a bottom dimpled and hummocked by having been bashed repeatedly […]

The new film The United States vs Billie Holiday is part of a canonisation the singer would have disliked, says BONNIE GREER.

Green Party co-leader Annalena Baerbock is emerging as a serious contender in the contest to succeed Angela Merkel. Towards the end of this year Europe may well have its first Green head of government – a German, a woman, a former youth elite trampolinist. Annalena Baerbock: remember the name, because she is set to become […]

Flags have dominated the news agenda in recent weeks as debates about national identity rumble on. If you’ve only been casually checking into the news – and after the few years we have all had, who could blame you? – you might be forgiven for thinking that the world is suddenly quiet. What other possible reason […]

Making the battle against Covid tribal will have tragic consequences. If relations between Britain and the EU before Brexit was finalised were frosty and since then have been distant, then in recent weeks they have become downright ugly. The cause, of course, has been the ongoing row over the AstraZeneca vaccine, developed and deployed here – and derided and […]

Welcome to the 2021 Maskies! Yes folks, commemorating 12 months of lockdown, it’s the first – and oh please dear God ONLY – annual Maskies Awards, in which we celebrate those who’ve made the job of being a satirist just that little bit easier over the course of this last plague-ridden year.  THE ‘SNAP YOURSELF […]

It has been a gloomy week on the sunlit uplands of sovereign Britain, where trade and vaccine squabbles with the EU are threatening to overwhelm our nation’s jab euphoria. Exactly what might have made the Europeans so suspicious of the lie-telling, law-breaking, flag-hugging UK will remain a mystery, but while Boris Johnson and David Frost […]

Another look at the continent’s weirdest stories, selected by Steve Anglesey. Paris police who boasted about busting a 1.2million euro (£1.03million) haul of MDMA and ecstasy turned out to have seized Haribo sweets instead. The gendarmes wrote on Twitter that after a “fruitful investigation” they had found a “large quantity of drugs to be sold […]

The world is on its knees in a pandemic that is close now to killing three million people. Yet the games go on, albeit as a ghostly, ghastly version of sport in stadiums without spectators. For a year, club football has soldiered on while communities have closed around them. In Europe we have the scarcely […]

They may have not been history’s most dynamic dynasty, but their knack for ‘muddling along’ might just be the safest policy for the European Union. In his play Bruderzwist (1872), Austrian playwright Franz Grillparzer depicts the notoriously indecisive and passive Habsburg Emperor Rudolf II being challenged by his energetic, activist brother Matthias. Rudolf is a […]

Following claims that the coronavirus pandemic has pushed Eastern and Western Europe further apart, we look at the recent political history of the key countries. BelarusOften described as Europe’s last dictatorship, the country has suffered a widespread crackdown on the protests that followed last year’s disputed election, which saw Alexander Lukashenko – president since the post […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the radical double life of beloved children’s author Arthur Ransome. Few writers have evoked a more bucolic view of England than Arthur Ransome. In the dozen books that comprise the Swallows and Amazons series he conjured magical stories of endless school holidays spent camping, fishing and messing about in boats, exploring nature and making […]

The Brexit vote and subsequent negotiations have reinforced an image of the UK as insular and exceptionalist. It will need a rebrand if it wants continued success away from the EU. As the UK prepares for economic recovery from COVID and makes the best of Brexit, it is striking that there has been no talk […]

In these exclusive extracts from his diaries, ALASTAIR CAMPBELL describes the aftermath of the Leveson inquiry. Thursday, November 29  The Leveson report is published, saying the press should set up a tough new independent regulator, underpinned by statute. It found: no widespread corruption of police by the press; that politicians and press have been too close; and that press behaviour, […]

WILL SELF on living in a Potemkin panopticon, the effects of which have been enhanced by the pandemic. Having been deeply sceptical about it I can now see at least some advantages to teaching online. Courses of study centred on texts would seem impoverished enough by being squeezed through the aorta of virtualisation – but my […]

TIM WALKER on an actor proud to have been called a luvvie. It was the word “luvvies” that introduced me to Peter Bowles. I’d used it in the way journalists generally do as a light-hearted, if lazy and cliched, way of describing actors and it had provoked a debate in the letters column of The Stage, […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the life of tightrope walker Karl Wallenda, a man tailed by tragedy. A pretty good crowd for a Tuesday, Karl Wallenda thought. Some 7,000 people had filled the Michigan State Fairgrounds in Detroit that night in January 1962 to see the Great Wallendas and the show was going well as it reached its […]

In these exclusive extracts from his diaries, ALASTAIR CAMPBELL recalls meeting David Cameron’s director of communications Craig Oliver. He felt Ed Miliband was outperforming his man.  Friday, May 18 Met Craig Oliver (Cameron’s communications director). Jeremy Heywood [cabinet secretary] still hadn’t replied to my complaint re. Cameron [Campbell had accused the PM of seeking to deflect criticism over Coulson […]

Much of the country is back in lockdown but the traumas of the pandemic look to have improved attitudes to the EU and blunted the appeal of populists. “It is our darkest hour: but we will make it.” In March 2020, the (now former) prime minister of Italy, Giuseppe Conte, echoed the words of Winston […]

The notion of ‘Global Britain’ goes hand in hand with good, proficient multi-linguistic skills.

In these exclusive extracts from his diaries, ALASTAIR CAMPBELL explains why he demanded an apology from Toby Young following his evidence to the Leveson inquiry.

While Indyref2 still looks the most likely end of the UK as we know it, and the SNP makes headlines, another constituent part’s fate is in the balance. Compare the British government’s approach to Scotland and Northern Ireland as it attempts to address the chaotic consequences of Brexit. The post-Brexit mood in both Scotland and […]

TANIT KOCH on just how close the Green Party are to power in Germany… and how they could throw it all away. Remember the many Britons who got hold of an EU passport after the 2016 referendum via the odd Irish granny? You may be among them. If you could now make that work vice versa, there’s a huge […]

The life of Black Panthers leader Hampton is the subject of a new movie starring Daniel Kaluuya. Bonnie Greer remembers the Hampton she knew briefly You never really go back to your youth. You move on, things happen to you. But your youth is still there, on the edges, and as you get older it moves […]

Readers have their say on Douglas Alexander's recent column in The New European