Opinion

Leading pollster PETER KELLNER offers his analysis of why so many centre-left parties are floundering, and where their best hopes now lie Are the glory days over for social democracy? Do voters now take for granted the great progressive reforms of the post-war era – pensions, education, healthcare, social insurance etc – and see no […]

A serving government official writes anonymously about how the administration’s mounting scandals, and its response to them, is creating a crisis for Whitehall. The civil service is in deep, deep trouble. Not because the knives are now out for the tiny numbers of senior civil servants who are discovered taking second jobs. Not because prime ministerial […]

Climate change has transformed the Arctic into one of the most politically dangerous regions on the planet. Now, Vladimir Putin is ramping up the rhetoric. If the James Bond franchise is looking for a baddy for its next film, it wouldn’t need to bother auditioning Vladimir Putin. He relishes the part; he plays to the […]

This all-English Champions League final between Man City and Chelsea is no guarantee of success at the Euros Beware the siren song telling us England will rule the playing fields of Europe in the coming weeks.  It is true that the Premier League is where the money is, and that two English clubs contest the […]

Mitch Benn rounds up the worst of another week in politics, including Priti Patel, Grant Shapps and Ivanka Trump

Don't expect a political earthquake, but the Green Party is already re-shaping the left of British politics

It's not a case of simply wanting to gerrymander the left, says Labour historian FRANCIS BECKETT, just that the traditional arrangement no longer suits either group

Dominic Cummings didn't sound so pro-Brexit when he faced a committee of MPs to discuss the coronavirus pandemic

The Corporation's current woes are being exploited for political gain by the government

Yvette Cooper is one of Labour’s most effective politicians, so could she one day replace Keir Starmer?

It has been a gloomy week on the sunlit uplands of sovereign Britain as our willingness to roll over for a trade deal with Australia confirms that the government does not give a XXXX about its own farmers. Despite complaints from that flaming galah George Eustice, trade secretary Liz ‘one stubbie short of a six-pack’ Truss […]

Germany fared almost as badly as the UK at the Eurovision Song Contest. Perhaps it’s time to come to an arrangement… Ooops, they did it again. Zero points… To us. And no, three pity points from the Austrian and Romanian juries don’t make our shame any less complete. But still, Vielen Dank, Britain, for saving us from the bottom […]

Why sanctions have become the go-to response when an international crisis hits

Black Lives Matter was not the only engine for the worldwide justice movement that sprung from the death of George Floyd Was the underlying drive of Black Lives Matter the only engine for the worldwide justice movement that sprung from the death of George Floyd? Or was there something else, too? When I first heard […]

For the last century, Turkey’s culture war has been played out in its music. And it’s not over yet Standing at the crossroads of continents, and the former capital of an empire stretching from North Africa to Eastern Europe, it is no surprise that Istanbul’s musical culture is a rich one. Turkish music encompasses multiple […]

The life of Rosa Bonheur, often considered the most famous female painter of the 19th century Rosa Bonheur might have been one of the greatest artists of the 19th century but you probably wouldn’t have wanted her living next door. Having moved from Bordeaux to Paris in the late 1820s when she was six years old, […]

It has been a year since the first signs of trouble for Europe's last dictatorship. So has Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko ridden out the storm, or simply delayed the inevitable?

King of TV commercials, Roy Andersson is also the auteur behind a series of bizarre, playful full-length masterpieces.  There are a good many film directors who got their start making commercials. Which would be fine if most of them didn’t make it so blindingly obvious, with their flashy-yet-vacuous imagery and pointlessly fast cutting.  Let’s not […]

Readers praise the former House of Commons speaker's column for The New European.

TIM WALKER remembers a meeting with a particularly pensive Rowan Atkinson I met Rowan Atkinson on an autumn day in 1988 that, he informed me, was the 10th anniversary of the start of his career in show business. Up until that point, his credits included the ground-breaking satirical television series Not the Nine 0’Cock News, Blackadder and its […]

The FA Cup holds an almost mystical appeal in south-east Asia. Now a Thai family have rewritten its history, as well as the destiny of unfashionable Leicester City If you ever spent time in South East Asia in the month of May you would know that there was one match that had almost mystical appeal. […]

The challenge of funding and providing social care is not unique to the UK. So what can we learn from other countries?

Why did Britain fall out of love with speedway, and how did Poland take over as the sport’s new spiritual home? Not so long ago, the start of the British speedway season would have been big news. That wasn’t the case this week, when the first of this year’s Covid-delayed league fixtures took place. Speedway was, at one […]

Restrictions might be easing and art galleries opening their doors again, but are virtual visits now here to stay?  So here I am in the National Gallery relishing the pulsating drama of Rembrandt’s Belshazzar’s Feast. By my side, Dr Gabriele Finaldi, director of the gallery, no less, is enthusing about the “huge emotional punch” of the painting which […]

Often seen as serious to the point of greyness, former Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has surprised many with his incendiary comments on immigration. So what lies behind them? He seemed to be everything Brexiteers disliked about the EU. A serious-minded bureaucrat steeped in the smooth workings of Europe’s capitals and chancelleries and adept at relentlessly channelling the orthodoxies of […]

Transport for London has retired its fleet of classic Routemaster buses, which has been running on the number 15 route, the capital’s last running heritage service. So, farewell then to the Routemaster bus – and while I fully appreciate that those of my readers who live elsewhere than the corporate death star formerly known as […]

Protests, polemic and polls show how Islamists and the far right are targeting Jews and attempting to rewrite the painful past “Our parents kept the suitcases packed, ready to leave any moment,” a friend wrote after I asked how she was coping with the anti-Semitic protests in Berlin. “Our generation of German Jews had long since stowed the […]

The song contest is just first of a series of events that highlight the tension between a desire to open up societies and the need to remain vigilant against the virus Never far from scandal, one of the greatest controversy’s surrounding this year’s Eurovision Song Contest is the fact that it is being held at […]

Health secretary Matt Hancock has released a video in which he is standing in front of an existing hospital and calls it “one of 40 new hospitals we’re going to build” VIOLATION OF THE LAWS OF PHYSICS OF THE WEEK A few days ago, health secretary Matt Hancock released a video in which he is […]

Chris West, an historian of the contest, chronicles its greatest ever controversies After a year’s hiatus caused by the pandemic the Eurovision Song Contest returns this week, in Rotterdam. As ever, the event has been accompanied by a palaver about some of the entries. The main focus this year has been on Belarus, which has form for doing […]

Former Commons speaker John Bercow on his anger at the government’s warped priorities and the Voter ID plan which proposes "a solution to a problem that does not exist"

Nearly five years since the Brexit vote it's proving to be far from the success the ringleaders promised