Opinion

In his book on Winston Churchill, Boris Johnson wrote that “one man can make all the difference”. This biographer still had faith in the “great man” theory of history. In his admiration for a charismatic and controversial figure, Johnson seemed to be hinting, or perhaps thinking, that another latter-day controversialist might also make a pretty […]

It was at the Chichester Festival Theatre just over a year ago that I last saw Dame Diana Rigg. Not on stage, but sitting directly in front of me as her daughter Rachael Stirling starred in a revival of Sir David Hare’s play Plenty. She glowed with maternal pride. The fine actress’s death earlier this […]

In a Britain where Gavin Williamson is education secretary, Suella Braverman is attorney general, Liam Fox is our candidate to lead the WTO and Priti Patel is home secretary, it comes as little surprise to hear of Boris Johnson’s supposed choice as the new chairman of the BBC Board. As the Mail on Sunday asked, […]

The European Commission has put tackling discrimination at the heart of its mission. That will mean tougher and more frequent clashes with some member states, says Piotr Godzisz. In her first state of the union address as president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen called out hatred and pledged to build “a union […]

The question of whether Donald John Trump, the 45th president of the United States is the worst the country has ever had has long been a valid one.  Trump filed for re-election the day of his inauguration, just the first of the precedent-breaking moves that he has made. In doing this he made his very presidency […]

Where does Brexit take us next? This government is on course to deliver the key goals that underpinned the commitment to take back control. But the force of the Brexit revolution is by no means spent. While the UK has reclaimed sovereignty, what that means for the future of this country remains far from clear. […]

This week we crossed yet another Brexit threshold: there are now fewer than 100 days left of the UK’s implementation period. Brexit is about to get real, and as it stands we will be in a no-deal situation in the middle of a coronavirus winter. There is still – just – time for the UK […]

Richard Leonard was elected as Labour’s leader in Scotland in November 2017 with a brief to re-establish his party as a force in Scottish politics. However, he has been unable to do so. Just as before, Scottish Labour have not threatened the SNP’s monopoly on power. Instead, it competes, a diminished force, with the Scottish […]

In July 1995, Tony Blair flew halfway around the world in his attempts to detoxify the brand of the organisation he had just taken over. The Labour leader decided that he needed to do whatever it took, wherever it took, to convince those with power and influence that his party had shed the extremism of […]

Now that the Tory press is finally turning against Boris Johnson, the contrarian in me wants to start making excuses for his feckless, over-entitled incompetence. It’s not easy running a hand-picked second-rate government, you know. Not during the twin Brexit and Covid crises, only one of which is your own fault. Both your own fault […]

One thing you find doing interviews is that everyone has something they don’t want to talk about. I’d known there was something about Richard Chamberlain ever since I’d been a kid in the 1970s. My family were then close to the owners of the Bear hotel at Woodstock. Kenneth More knew them, too, and was […]

This week we crossed yet another Brexit threshold: there are now fewer than 100 days left of the UK’s implementation period. Brexit is about to get real, and as it stands we will be in a no-deal situation in the middle of a coronavirus winter. There is still – just – time for the UK […]

Boris Johnson’s non-visit to Perugia in Italy was the peculiar story of the week. An Italian paper reported it as a fact. A categorical No.10 denial followed. Then it emerged that airport staff had actually seen the arrival of Tony Blair and seemingly thought he was still Britain’s prime minister. Many of us wish he were, […]

I don’t know about you, but I rather miss being bored by British politics. For the last couple of decades, I’ve been obsessively following American political developments; in fact, for much of the early part of the period I paid rather more attention to events across the pond than to what was happening over here. […]

I remember having lunch with Terence Conran – who died last week, aged 88 – at his Bibendum restaurant on the Old Brompton Road sometime in the early 2000s. It was a bizarre experience: sitting on a banquette in an interior curated – if not exactly designed – by my companion, who was wearing a […]

When I left school in 1963 at the age of 19 after 15 years of full-time education, nothing happened. Nothing at all. We just walked out of the school gates, knowing that we would not be coming back anymore, except as visitors. There were no ceremonies, no dressing up, no handing over of pieces of […]

I find it somewhat ageing to admit that I once interviewed an actress who had played the title role in Tess of the d’Urbervilles with the author himself in attendance. I have thus shaken the hand of a lady who had shaken the hand of Thomas Hardy. Dame Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies was celebrating her 99th birthday when I […]

As someone who is passionately pro-European, the Brexit process is painful enough as it is. Now, the government are rubbing salt into the wound. Breaking international law is a new low.The UK has left the EU. All that needed to be done, voters were told,was for Boris Johnson to implement his “oven ready” deal, including […]

Like many of you, the other day I woke up to read headlines screaming “SCIENTISTS DISCOVER LIFE ON VENUS”. Like, I trust and expect, most of you I did not react to this by leaping to my feet and shouting “OMG LIFE ON VENUS” but rather by clicking on the link in question and saying […]

There’s a good chance that you when you leave the house today you’ll put on a face mask that obscures your mouth. Such coverings can affect our ability to communicate and provide a particular challenge to those that need to see lips to understand speech. But what of the eyes that remain uncovered? Shakespeare said […]

There’s a classic showbiz story about comedy double act Mike and Bernie Winters on their debut at the feared Glasgow Empire in the 1960s. Their act opened as it usually did, with a classic bit of misdirection; straight man Mike playing mellow jazz on a clarinet until his wacky brother suddenly thrust his head through […]

Back in 2018, I was working on the anti-Semitism section of a book about Jeremy Corbyn. After several emails and phone calls to the leader of the opposition’s office went unanswered, I sent Corbyn’s head of communications and strategy, Seumas Milne, the notes of my briefing from the Board of Deputies of British Jews about […]

Your correspondents and letters pages rightly focus on the future challenges for Labour and the Liberal Democrats, shell-shocked by the election. “Is Starmer more Major than Blair?”, asks Peter Kerr – but is Starmer more John Smith, perhaps?Recovery is not enough now; inspiring vision is also needed. Harold Wilson, another exemplar, also ran the modernisation vision […]

Let me mention two political figures, one of whom, Douglas Alexander, you will likely have heard of; the other, Brendan Boyle, of whom more later, may be less familiar to a British audience. Douglas Alexander was a Labour MP, first elected in 1997, who fell victim to the SNP surge in 2015. A long-time strategic […]

To read the papers at the moment is to watch the concept of truth decompose in front of your eyes. The debate over the Withdrawal Agreement is the kind of thing which makes you question your sanity. We’re told that the document is intolerable. It’s the result of European “dirty tactics”, according to the Sun’s political […]

Between September and December 12 last year, I and a dedicated group of Lib Dem canvassers knocked on every door of the four Harpenden wards, not once but twice as we pushed to unseat Bim Afolami, our careerist, lacklustre Tory MP. Harpenden and Hitchin voted 61% in favour of remaining in the EU, so many […]

Fires at a reception centre for asylum seekers on the Greek island of Lesbos have left thousands of people without shelter. Around 13,000 people – including those from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and west Africa – lived at the Moria Reception and Identification Centre (RIC) in a space intended for just over 3,000. Most will have […]

Scotland’s first minister is on a winning streak. Nicola Sturgeon’s personal approval rating is sky-high. Her party leads by miles in the polls, despite
having been in power for more than 13 years. Her Scottish National Party’s cherished dream and raison d’être – Scotland’s independence – now appears to be the choice of a majority of Scottish voters. […]

The day before the “rule of six” rule came into force, Carl Heneghan, a professor of evidence-based medicine, and Tom Jefferson, a research fellow, both from the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University, wrote an opinion piece for the Spectator, calling for the rule to be “binned”. The Daily Telegraph repeated Heneghan and Jefferson’s assertion that “life […]

Had we been asked to predict the top political issues of 2020, few of us would’ve picked clinical tests among them – but these are testing times. An understanding of exactly who has Covid-19 is an essential part of working out how the virus can be controlled and how our society, economy and lives can […]

“Regulations….are not to be regarded as unlawful on the grounds of any incompatibility or inconsistency with any relevant domestic or international law”– Clause 45 (2) (a) on state aid in the Internal Market Bill It already seems an age ago, but when I first heard Boris “Moonshot ” Johnson used the phrase “the rule of […]

This week’s Brexit row has a retro feel. Michel Barnier and an impasse in Brussels. Tory rebels led by a former attorney general. ‘Get Brexit done’. For old time’s sake we even had Ed Miliband gesticulating frantically at the despatch box and Nigel Farage popping up to declare ‘this isn’t the Brexit we voted for’. […]