News and Opinion

Twitter has permanently suspended Katie Hopkins from its social media platform for breaking the rules on hate speech. The former Apprentice star turned far-right commentator had more than one million followers on the platform. Hopkins has sparked outrage on numerous occasions in recent years with comments on race, religion and immigration – which had led […]

Long before there was Donald Trump, there was Huey Long. Richard Luck recalls the populist politician whose career ultimately ended in tragedy, rather than the presidency Broderick Crawford (1910 – 1986) addresses the crowd from the balcony of his campaign headquarters in the political drama ‘All The King’s Men’, based on the life of Louisiana […]

All possibilities remain in the search for the ultimate source of Covid-19. But Donald Trump’s unsupported allegations about its emergence from a Wuhan lab are actually hindering vital investigations, says GILES WHITTELL Wuhan, China, March 4th 2020. Photo by Zhang Chang/China News Service via Getty Images – Credit: Visual China Group via Getty Ima The […]

The government no longer exists, writes MITCH BENN. In its place, we have a PR machine. I’ve come to something of a realisation in the last week or so: we do not, at this moment, have a government in the country. We have a prime minister, when he can be bothered to turn up; we […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on Jacqueline Audry, the iconic French film-maker who subverted post-war cinema Jacqueline Audry’s films were sumptuous. At her peak during the 1950s she produced a succession of costume dramas set during the Belle Époque, most of them adaptations from novels in which the rustle of taffeta began as the opening credits faded and […]

Britain is far from the only country hit by the shockwaves from the killing of George Floyd. JASON WALSH reports on how protests have raised different questions for each European nation People raise their fists during a rally as part of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ worldwide protests against racism and police brutality, on Place de […]

WILL SELF on the paradoxes and contradictions which make up multiculturalism Years ago I had the misfortune to be seated at a fancy dinner next to Conrad Black, who at that time was a controversial – if ennobled – media tycoon. Throughout the meal we argued about everything, such was the divergence in our opinions, […]

In the 1970s two New York venues were at the beating heart of a culture that spread around the world. Garth Cartwright talks to the photographer who captured the scene Blondie’s Debby Harry. Photo: Gary Green – Credit: Archant New York City in the early-1970s was dirty, decrepit, violent and hugely creative. Back then the […]

Four years on from the referendum, JOHN KAMPFNER considers what might happen in the future, and the long term prospects for Bre-entry John Gummer tells a fascinating if painful story. Back in 1994, the-then environment secretary under John Major invited his new German counterpart and her husband to spend the weekend with him and his […]

British businesses cannot just congratulate themselves for being part of a society marginally less racist than the US, says Ashish Prashar When the Empire Windrush pulled into Tilbury Docks on June 22, 1948, almost exactly 72 years ago, it was accompanied by the sound of Calypso, as passenger Aldwyn Robers, stage name Lord Kitchner, performed […]

An advisor who sits on the Independent Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) has said he is not convinced that lowering the coronavirus alert level was ‘the right thing to do’. Appearing on Sky News, Dr Gabriel Scally said he was uneasy about the health department’s latest announcement, saying he could not see the ‘connections’ […]

A top foreign office civil servant has been forced to resign after Downing Street told him he had to go as part of a government shake-up of Whitehall institutions. Sir Simon McDonald told staff at the Foreign Commonwealth Office (FCO), where he is the most senior official, that No. 10 would find a new replacement […]

A Tory Brexiteer MP was caught out suggesting the government was trialling various track-and-trace apps only to downplay the claims moments later on BBC’s Question time. James Cleverly was taking questions from the audience when he claimed No. 10 was ‘keeping its options open’ on different versions of contact tracing software to then say it […]

A Lib Dem leadership hopeful has published a book laying out ‘progressive and centre-left’ policies as she called for the party to show it had changed Layla Moran has edited a 128-page publication called Build Back Better with contributions from a number of leading figures, including senior politicians who served in government when the party […]

US president Donald Trump has said he has heard ‘interesting’ things about Roswell, the crash site of an alleged UFO Trump made the comments in an interview with his son, who asked if the White House incumbent could ‘let us know what’s really going on’. ‘I won’t talk to you about what I know about […]

A toxic culture, Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and a litany of organisational failures have been blamed for Labour’s disastrous loss in the last election Labour Together, a group including MPs Ed Miliband and Lucy Powell, party members, union leaders and media figures, has investigated a crushing defeat it said was ‘a long time coming’. The group’s […]

Think you know Europe? Take our latest lockdown quiz As a New European reader, you probably reckon you know the continent inside out. Test yourself with our fiendish quiz…

New polling has found more Britons would back Remain if another referendum was held today – with a majority thinking living costs will be worse after the transition period. The snap survey by Kantar showed that 56% of the public would vote remain if a referendum was held again now, up four percent from September […]

A committee of cross-party MPs are urging the government to ‘compromise’ by agreeing to sign up to European Union standards in order to make a breakthrough in Brexit talks. Last week Boris Johnson urged the EU to ‘put a tiger in the tank’ and step up efforts to secure an agreement by the end of […]

It might seem like a modern complaint, but, says PETER TRUDGILL, this practice has been going on since the Ancient Greeks The sound represented by our Latin-alphabet letter H has had a sorry history in the languages of Europe over the last 2,000 years or so. Perhaps the decline started in Greek. The Ancient Greek […]

TIM WALKER on Kirk Douglas, the Hollywood legend in no mood to talk When Kirk Douglas died earlier this year at the age of 103, there was quite properly a great fuss made about him. The man who had dared to stand up to the McCarthyite right in America by insisting that the blacklisted Dalton […]

The EU ambassador to the UK has warned that Britain faces crashing out of the single market if it does not reach a deal with Brussels by October. Ambassador Joao Vale de Almeida stressed that the two sides were in a ‘unique and historic’ situation during a Chatham House debate on the future of the […]

Former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard downplayed claims a Australia-UK trade deal would save British producers after Brexit, stressing that her nation was ‘no substitute’ for the EU. Appearing on BBC breakfast, Gillard reminded viewers that the UK sat quite low on Australia’s list of top trading partners and that a pact between the countries […]

French president Emmanuel Macron has shown leadership on coronavirus, the economic recovery and issues at the centre of the Black Lives Matter protests. It is a stark contrast to Boris Johnson’s approach. In his latest short but poignant speech, French president Emmanuel Macron has successfully managed to show clear leadership in his latest speech – […]

IAN HAMILTON and HARRY SUMNALL on why experts suspect the drug is about to take hold across the continent For many people in Europe, the closest they will have got to methamphetamine will be the TV series Breaking Bad. But that could be about to change, as a result of developments in the international supply […]

The government is planning a military-style ‘shock and awe’ media campaign to prepare the public for a no-deal Brexit at the end of this year. The communications drive, which will cost taxpayers £4.5 million, begins in July and will continue through to May 2022 in four planned phases, POLITICO reports. According to a government strategic […]

MICHAEL WHITE on how the PM's inept leadership has left his own team looking for change

A Tory MP has been reprimanded for his ‘deprecatory’ behaviour and ordered to apologise for failing to register his business directorships as interests Marcus Fysh, a member of the European scrutiny committee, was today found to have made three breaches of the code of conduct by the parliamentary commissioner for standards. The commissioner would typically […]

Donald Trump was unaware Britain was a nuclear power, according to leaks from a new book by John Bolton Bolton, a staunch conservative and former UN ambassador who served for 17 months in the White House, said the president was ‘stunningly uninformed’ in his new memoir, The Room Where It Happened. The Times reported the […]

Dominic Raab has faced backlash over comments he made about the Black Lives Matter movement in which he compared ‘taking the knee’ to ‘subjugation’, while thinking it originated from a TV show. https://twitter.com/SamWhyte/status/1273536868165001216 The foreign secretary told talkRADIO listeners he thought the gesture came from the hit HBO series, Game of Thrones, before saying it […]

Who is on the BBC Question Time panel tonight? Here’s your full guide It’s another virtual Question Time, with audience members submitting questions via video. But who’s on the panel? Here’s your complete guide… James Cleverly Who? Junior Foreign Office minister Former soldier Cleverly used to be a practically weekly presence on Question Time as […]

A makeover for a plane that Boris Johnson once dubbed his ‘Brexit plane’ is set to cost almost £1 million. The grey RAF Voyager jet is currently receiving a pre-planned makeover at an airport in Cambridge, with Downing Street confirming it will be painted red, white and blue. A spokesperson for Boris Johnson said the […]