Opinion

The electoral tectonic plates are shifting in New Zealand, reports RICHARD SHAW. Jacinda Ardern has helped shift politics to the centre-left. Strong team. More jobs. Better economy. So say the National Party’s campaign hoardings. Only thing is, last Sunday’s Newshub-Reid Research poll – which had support for the Labour Party at 60.9% and for National […]

As a 14-day quarentine has been imposed on Brits who have travelled to Spain, JAMES BALL criticises the government for its ‘confusing’ policies abroad. When what should be a good and obvious policy becomes a fiasco, you know something fundamental has gone awry. This is what should be – but almost certainly isn’t – eating […]

The Russia report’s criticism of the government was unambiguous and unhesitating. JAMES BALL wonders what comes next. Reading a report from parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) often feels like trying to deduce a cryptic message from an oracle in Classical literature. A stinging criticism from an ISC report might typically read ‘we now have […]

TIM WALKER recalls his conversation with the famed King Kong actress. The producer told Fay Wray that she was going to have ‘the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood’ and she optimistically thought it might be Cary Grant. It turned out to be a giant ape – or at least an 18-inch model of one […]

MITCH BENN says loyalty is great, but it’s rarely an indicator of intelligence – and that’s the government’s problem. It’s good to know that as the country sinks into ever more viscous mires of torpor and despair, there’s still someone out there who can be guaranteed to raise a smile. I refer of course to […]

When Boris Johnson became prime minister on July 24 2019, his party was languishing in the polls and had not long suffered one of its worst ever performances at the ballot box, securing just 9% of the vote in elections to the European Parliament. But almost immediately the Tories’ poll share began to rise, from […]

Prince George provided a welcome distraction from the findings of the Russia report for many newspapers, while the red-tops relegated the findings towards the back of their publications. And so, the Russia report has finally been published. It didn’t say the Russians had interfered with the Brexit referendum. It came up with a far more […]

The chancellor’s plan for jobs will fail without greater collaboration with trade unions and businesses, says Josh Abey The chancellor’s so-called ‘plan for jobs’ this month involved a job retention bonus for employers bringing back furloughed staff, the ‘kickstart’ scheme to provide work placements for young people facing long-term unemployment and demand-boosting policies to protect […]

TIM WALKER recalls working with the creative polymath Sir Peter Ustinov. If ever there was a model European, it was Sir Peter Ustinov. It was working for the first European newspaper – the one launched by Robert Maxwell in the 1990s – that I got to know him. Maxwell may have thought of Ustinov as […]

Readers have their say on the Leave.EU campaign’s move to New Zealand to support populist Kiwi politician Winston Peters. I notice from Steve Anglesey’s column that arch-Brexiteers Arron Banks and Andy Wigmore have been in New Zealand campaigning against the incumbent prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, and her ruling party (‘Laughing all the way to Banks’ […]

Readers have their say on the latest developments over Brexit and the government’s response to coronavirus. Ministers say they trust people to do the sensible thing when it comes to face masks. That presumably includes all those people who have ignored all the advice and instructions so far, refuse to wear a face mask under […]

MITCH BENN on the tell-all memoir by Mary Trump which delves deep into the president’s pschye. I’m sure you’ve all heard the expression ‘I think, therefore I am’; it was first coined by the philosopher René Descartes in 1637 and it describes, succinctly, the limits placed upon human cognition and on the whole idea of […]

BONNIE GREER says the 2020 election in America could make it the year of the ‘third party candidates’. Section One of Article Two of the United States Constitution sets forth the eligibility requirements for serving as president of the United States: ‘No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, […]

Both sides in the cancel culture debate are misrepresenting each other and taking pot shots at straw men, says JAMES BALL. If you’re unfortunate enough to spend much time on the internet – and in the era of coronavirus that’s almost all of us – furious rows about ‘cancel culture’ have been all but unavoidable […]

We can’t build a strong and supportive community for our young people of colour until we abolish the inhuman system of prison, argues Ashish Prashar The impact of the Black Lives Matter movement is nowhere near close to fully surfacing. As the movement continues with protests across the world there is a wider social awakening […]

Liberal Democrat MP LAYLA MORAN points out the government’s information Brexit blitz comes from the same politicians who have spent years spinning and lying about the reality of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. Even by the standards we’ve come to expect from this government, the latest announcement of a £93 million Brexit publicity campaign […]

The COVID-19 crisis is a mirror. And we need to take a good hard look into it, says BONNIE GREER. That the anti-racism, human rights movement has gained such momentum now is no accident. Black men have been killed by the police countless times, but why did the death of George Floyd affect us so […]

MITCH BENN sees 2020 as the perfect time for Sapphire and Steel to return – as something has definitely gone wrong with time. Okay so who remembers Sapphire & Steel? I’m guessing that most of you of a similar (increasingly dusty and obscure) vintage as myself will recall Sapphire & Steel being on prime time […]

TIM WALKER examines the life of the actress who finally found contentment. When I interviewed Susannah York in the late 1980s, she was nudging 50 and going through a tough time. She had lately lost her elder sister Carolyn to alcoholism. She was making films like Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and guest-starring in […]

One reader thinks Boris Johnson will resign after claiming he has achieved his goal of getting Brexit ‘done’. Am I the only person who thinks the career psychopath and his mop-haired poodle will have resigned by the end of the year, claiming how they courageously managed to ‘get Brexit done’? Job done: Maximum destruction and […]

Labour will fare better once the issue of Scottish independence is resolved, claims reader David Roche. It was heartening to see four letters supporting the further (d)evolution of the well-past-its sell-by date United Kingdom in TNE #201. In particular, councillor Andrew Parrott’s rationale – as a ‘liberal Englishman’ with sympathy for liberal-Labour policies – for […]

Keir Starmer faces a barrage of criticism from the hard left – no matter what he does, according to James Ball. Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer faces a barrage of criticism from the hard left of the party, says James Ball. Picture: Aaron Chown/PA – Credit: PA When an influential party figure resigns in […]

Readers have their say on the week in news. Boris Johnson told us Brexit would be easy, then we’d sort out this virus in three months and now he tells us he’s pumping billions into the economy and there will be no austerity. As they say ‘third time lucky’. Tony Howarth London SW3 Have your […]

Whether it’s Brexit or the coronavirus response, this isn’t ‘British exceptionalism’, it was manufactured in England. Surely the people of Scotland, Wales and Ulster have every right to protest when they hear the expression ‘British exceptionalism’. As the former MP Phillip Lee insisted on a recent Channel 4 Dispatches, the source of the government’s disastrous […]

One reader thinks the tactics Boris Johnson used to win the last election are here to stay. Why do so many commentators and letter writers to TNE assume that the collapse of the Johnson project (if such a shambles may be termed thus) will provide an opening for the liberal centre-left? Given the 2019 election […]

Forget talk of ‘building’, this government only cares about Brexiteer revenge, argues STEVE ANGLESEY. Boris Johnson and Mark Sedwill. Photo: Getty Images – Credit: Getty Images The government is being run on a new three-word slogan: Take Brexit Revenge. What other rational explanation is there for this irrational administration? It is lurching out of coronavirus […]

Academy Award nominated Sarah Miles gave TIM WALKER a shock when the topic of the EU referendum came up mid-interview. Sarah Miles and I should really be friends. We established a great rapport four years ago when I journeyed to her 11th century manor house in the Sussex countryside. Interviewing film stars is normally a […]

MITCH BENN is dreading the end of lockdown. Here he wonders why so many other people aren’t. I have a small confession to make. In fact it might not even be that small; I can’t really tell. Certainly I’m nervous as I type this but here goes: I’m really dreading lockdown ending. I’m aware that […]

Our government follows a pattern of breaking things apart without knowing how to put them back together, writes JAMES BALL. There are very few of us who would actively want to hear much about home insulation. But for governments, it’s the kind of boring policy that makes a lot of sense – especially during a […]

MICHAEL WHITE looks ahead to a summer of local lockdowns, recriminations and economic gloom. The paradox at the heart of this week’s dismissal of Mark Sedwill as Whitehall’s Grand Vizier is that Dominic Cummings has scattered so much forensic evidence at the scene of the crime that it will likely seal his own fate in […]

TIM WALKER writes about his very special link with an actress from the golden age of cinema It’s almost 10 years since the last of the Mawby Triplets died, aged 90, at her home in Poole in Dorset. With her sisters, Claudette and Angella, Claudine had made 24 films in Hollywood in the Roaring Twenties […]

MITCH BENN on the Boris Johnson and Donald Trump supporters who can no longer defend their leader. It’s not often that I feel sympathy for Donald Trump. Actually I’d like to revise that statement; it’s never that I feel sympathy for Donald Trump. Whatever misfortunes he may fleetingly suffer he has invariably brought upon himself […]