News and Opinion

Britain’s billionaires have seen their fortunes soar since lockdown, despite the economy entering recession, and the Treasury reportedly scrapping plans for a minimum wage rise next year. The value of fortunes for 53 of the UK’s billionaires leapt by 14.3% (£26.3 billion) to approximately £211 billion over the past six months, data from Forbes shows. […]

Pro-migrant activists have taken their stand against the far-right in Dover by holding a rally in support of refugees. Pro-migrant supporters during a ‘solidarity stand’ in Dover’s Market Square in support of the refugees crossing the Channel to Kent. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA. – Credit: PA The campaigners took a peaceful stance as police clashed with […]

Extinction Rebellion protesters have blockaded major printing presses to stop a range of newspapers reaching news stands. More than 100 protesters used vehicles to block roads outside the printing works at Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, and Knowsley, near Liverpool. The printing presses publish Rupert Murdoch titles including The Sun, The Times, The Sun on Sunday and The […]

Former British Ambassador to the US Lord Darroch told Boris Johnson he partly holds the prime minister responsible for his resignation from his Washington post. Darroch resigned following the leaking of a cable in which the ambassador said Donald Trump was ‘inept’ as president. Johnson, who was then running for the Conservative leadership, repeatedly refused […]

Far-right, anti-migrant protesters have clashed with police and blocked roads in Dover. Anti-migrant protesters demonstrate in Dover against immigration and the journeys made by refugees crossing the Channel to Kent. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA. – Credit: PA Rival groups have assembled in Dover to demonstrate over the arrival of thousands of migrants in small boats. Traffic […]

Even if Boris Johnson was to resign at the end of the year, it will be six months too late, writes JULIAN SELF. Boris Johnson is nominally the leader of the government (until February, at least, according to his chief advisor’s dad) but it is surely becoming abundantly clear to everybody that he only ever […]

Controversial figure Tony Abbott has been appointed to the Board of Trade, despite critics arguing the former Australian prime minister was not suitable to be a government trade adviser. Critics raised numerous concerns over allegations against the 62-year-old, including his climate change scepticism and belief that coronavirus restrictions should be lifted. But Boris Johnson defended […]

Sir Ed Davey, who was elected as leader of the Lib Dems last week, has said the party is in ‘listening mode’ over its policies. The MP for Surbiton in Surrey said the arch-Remain party that campaigned for a second referendum is not arguing to re-join the EU but to be closer to Europe. The […]

Tory MPs have reportedly breached social distancing rules in parliament with a meeting of the 1922 committee where Boris Johnson spoke. The prime minister has faced questions over whether he gave a speech to at least 50 Conservatives in a parliament room marked for a maximum of 29 people to prevent the spread of coronavirus. […]

Boris Johnson has defended Tony Abbott as being a ‘guy who was elected by the people of the great liberal democratic nation of Australia’. Asked during a visit to Solihull about allegations the Australian former prime minister, who is set to receive a trade role, Johnson said: ‘There’s going to be an announcement I think […]

Scottish Labour MP Ian Murray has said he decided to ‘stay and fight’ for Labour after it was revealed he planned to defect to Change UK until a last-minute change of mind. A new book on Jeremy Corbyn’s time as Labour leader claims the Edinburgh South MP was on the brink of resigning from the […]

Boris Johnson has insisted ‘overwhelmingly the UK is proceeding as one’ with its coronavirus response. The comments come after transport minister Grant Shapps admitted there is ‘confusion’ over differing quarantine rules across the union. During his visit to Solihull, the prime minister said: ‘The reality is that different devolved administrations in the UK, Scotland, Wales […]

Labour peer Lord Robertson has said Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard standing down would help to change Labour’s fortunes in Scotland. The former defence secretary has joined other Labour peers who have signed a letter urging Mr Leonard to do what is best for the party and the country. It comes after four of his […]

British food businesses may be unable to continue selling to the EU and Northern Ireland after Brexit after Boris Johnson’s government missed a key deadline to advise on what rules need to be followed. Business Insider reports that the time for the government to advise on labelling rules to follow from the end of the […]

Health secretary Matt Hancock has been accused of hypocrisy after tweeting about LGBT inclusivity hours after defending the rumoured hiring by government of a homophobic politician. On Thursday Hancock appeared to dismiss concerns about former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott’s misogyny and homophobia ‘because he’s an expert in trade’. Abbott has previously said that he […]

Transport secretary Grant Shapps has squirmed at questions about his private jet being registered in the US after accusations he was undermining the British system. Concern about foreign-registered planes in the UK were raised after it emerged the aircraft and pilot involved in the crash which killed footballer Emiliano Sala in January 2019 were licensed […]

Haulage bosses have demanded an ‘urgent meeting’ with cabinet ministers over fears about the ‘significant gaps’ in their plans for Brexit. Eight logistics organisations, including the Road Haulage Association (RHA), have written to Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove to highlight fears the UK-EU supply chain ‘will be severely disrupted’ next year if issues are not […]

As a New European reader, you probably reckon you keep a close eye on the continent’s news. Test yourself with our quiz… Think you’re on top of what’s been going on across Europe in the past seven days? Take The New European’s tricky quiz and find out just how much of a Europhile you are…

He has a reputation for calmness, but Brussels’ Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier shows flashes of passion, as he tells compatriot MARION VAN RENTERGHEM what is at stake for the EU, what the chances are of a deal, and where he believes his British counterparts have blundered. If Michel Barnier didn’t exist, the Brexiteers would have […]

International trade secretary and equalities minister Liz Truss has claimed it is ‘hypocrisy’ for Labour to attack the government over a possible hiring of Tony Abbott. It is reported that Abbott is in talks to become joint president of the relaunched Board of Trade but critics have raised numerous concerns, including over his belief that […]

The pandemic has exacerbated old arguments about the education system. Who among us, no matter how valetudinarian, cannot recall the distinctive aromas of pencil shavings, the leather of recently purchased school shoes, and the fresh vinyl of a new satchel? The three little words, back to school, have, since around the time Flashman began beating […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the great life of soviet Russian-American actress and author Victoria Fyodorova. ‘For all I knew Poludino was the world, and was like every other place in the world,’ wrote Victoria Fyodorova of the village in northern Kazakhstan where she grew up with her mother Alexandra, a brother Yuri, ten years older, and […]

PETER TRUDGILL on the story of Sacajawea. The Louisiana Purchase is the name given to the 1803 deal under which the USA ‘bought’ very large tracts of North American land from France, extending American control over the continent an enormous distance westwards. The area in question covered the whole of modern Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, […]

TIM WALKER on Eileen Atkins and how she likes to disappear into a part as she feels stardom can be an encumbrance. Not long before lockdown, I went to a cheering lunch in Chelsea with Sir Ronald Harwood, the playwright and Oscar-winning screenwriter. Men always love the sound of their own voices and we are […]

Downing Street has denied the existence of a ‘back to the office’ campaign to get people in the workplace, despite plans for new social media activity in the coming days. Ministers fear huge job losses in town and city centre shops and cafes if workers do not return to their pre-lockdown commuter patterns. But the […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK on the former Cypriot fishing village that became an unlikely outpost of UK garage music. Ayia Napa means ‘Holy Forest’. As the Cypriot town’s origin myth has it, a hunter found an icon of the Virgin in a cave in the woods, giving it its name. In the late middle ages, when Cyprus […]

MITCH BENN on how former TV personalities such as Boris Johnson and Donald Trump should be banned from becoming politicians. Okay, how’s this for a semi-serious suggestion: anyone who’s ever presented a TV game show should be barred for life from running for high office. What do you think? I’m sorry if this nips in […]

Germans wince at the title of JOHN KAMPFNER’s new book on their ‘grown-up’ country. But, as he explains, it accurately captures the nation on which Europe’s future rests In January 2021, Germany will be 150 years old. No country has caused so much harm in so little time. Half of modern Germany’s lifespan has been […]

RICHARD CORBETT on the warped economics of European football which are entrenching its elite sides. So, Bayern Munich are European football champions for the sixth time, after beating Paris St-Germain in last month’s Champions League final. Their triumph means that every time over the last 15 years (with one exception), the tournament has been won […]

JAMES OLIVER tells the story of African cinema’s past and its promising future. Light is an under-appreciated part of cinema. It’s light – the brighter the better – which makes the medium possible in the first place, trapping the images in the camera and then freeing them again in the projection beam. It was the […]

PETER HETHERINGTON looks back at the birth of Britain’s post-war new towns to see what lessons – of successes and failures – might help to address today’s housing crisis. 1st September 1978: A group of cows made from concrete and scrap standing in a field by a railway track, created by artist Liz Ley as […]

Alan McGee was the 1990s record label boss who got an invite to Downing Street at the height of Cool Britannia. He talks to MATT WITHERS about that era, the future of rock ‘n’ roll, politics and his loathing of BBC 6Music… and London. Noel Gallagher and his girlfriend Meg Matthews at 10 Downing Street […]