News and Opinion

Britain wants a bespoke Brexit trade deal. But, as former senior international trade adviser JIM FANSHAWE explains, the clock is ticking towards the worst case scenario Back in January, South Africa dealt a blow to Britain’s somewhat naïve intention to just try and adopt existing EU agreements post-Brexit. Rob Davies, South Africa’s trade minister, said […]

Only the really unscrupulous or bankrupt shirk from their responsibilities over pensions, says former pensions minister ROS ALTMANN. Brexit should not excuse such bad behaviour Brexit negotiations are stuck over the issue of our so-called ‘divorce bill’. One of the sticking points relates to past pension promises. David Davis has suggested that demands for paying […]

The ‘morality police’ of Brexit are closing down debate, says YASMIN ALIBHAI-BROWN. We must not let them What? We can’t object to Brexit? Can’t even scream as the nation is propelled headlong into a lightless chasm? The rules have apparently changed. All Brits are expected to fall in line, to commit absolutely to the referendum […]

The playwright, author and critic on Brexit’s false sense of English patriotism There is still a Leave demographic, slowly shrinking, but still resilient. Many ask why this is, even in the face of another possibly fatal intrusion of reality threatening that coup d’état against reason known as Brexit. As anyone really paying attention knows, the […]

Never mind Hollywood, the greatest action movie of all time is a French classic. RICHARD LUCK looks back on a film that was ripped off by Spielberg and remade by William Friedkin The American director William Friedkin was at the peak of his powers in 1974. The double whammy of The French Connection and The […]

The East German authorities hoped Bruce Springsteen might help bolster their ailing regime. Instead, as IAN WALKER explains, he doomed it It was the summer of 1988 and one of the last battles of the Cold War was about to take place in Berlin. Forty three years of useless division, of hostile, cynical realpolitik and […]

Criticism of Harvey Weinstein has shifted to a critique of the sort of liberalism he is said to have espoused, says BARBARA ELLEN. But surely he wears his liberalism like a mask If disgraced Hollywood film producer, Harvey Weinstein, were standing in front of you right now – what would you say to him? Personally, […]

MICHAEL WHITE on a pitied prime minister whose weakness may turn into a negotiating strength Jeremy Corbyn has come a long way at the Commons dispatch box since his first fumbling sessions of Prime Minister’s question time. And when he quoted Liam Fox back at Theresa May after her latest statement on the Brexit negotiations […]

PAUL CONNEW on the US president’s latest imbroglio It was an under siege US president who presided over the scandal which gave the world the over-used suffix, ‘gate’. Now, another under siege one is responsible for its latest, and perhaps most inelegant to date, application… ‘condolencegate’. And Donald Trump’s latest imbroglio might well prove the […]

A Brexit minister today quit citing health reasons, two years after suffering an injury leaping out of a helicopter. Baroness Anelay, who was only appointed minister of state at the Brexit Department in June, said she was “calling time” on her career. The 70-year-old injured her ankle in an accident getting out of a Black […]

The comedian, musician and writer on how American Halloween supplanted the ‘British’ Halloween of old Just one of the many exciting side-benefits of my rapidly advancing years, along with the receding hairline and similarly receding eyesight, is a marked acceleration in just how rapidly the aforementioned years appear to be advancing. I don’t know about […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK looks back on a year which saw the first stirrings of a new sound and a new character – the teenager If rock and roll was but a twinkle in Bill Haley’s eye as the 1950s dawned, 1952 saw it born, even if it would take time to mature. This was the year […]

Steve Anglesey, Matt Withers and Geri Scott discuss the week in Brexit, including David Davis’ dismal week and Chris Heaton Harris and Paul Dacre’s joint assault on universities In addition, the team talk the worst Brexiteers of the week, the sad death of a TNE institution, Jared O’Mara, what Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May smell […]

Neither carries a blackjack or a Tommy gun. But Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein are modern-day thugs, says Pulitzer Prize-winning writer ALBERT SCARDINO Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein were cut from the same roll of toilet paper. Both are pigs, both are thugs, both are American men of a certain age, a certain position of […]

Could Catalonia go it alone, and could Spain afford to let it? MIREIA JOFRE-BONET and ALBERT BANAL-ESTANOL analyse the economic consequences of Catalan independence The prospect of Catalonia seceding from Spain has never looked closer. Following a messy referendum vote on the matter (which the Spanish government refused to recognise but sent police in to […]

Twenty-five years on, is pioneering Euro soap Eldorado due a cultural re-appraisal? Not a chance, says ANDREW WOODS. In fact, we can add Brexit to this show’s rotten legacy You couldn’t lay all the responsibility of Britain voting to leave the EU on BBC1’s 1992 ‘Euro soap’ Eldorado. But it certainly didn’t help. A prime-time […]

STEVE ANGLESEY picks out the worst Brexiteers of the week 10 Henry Bolton Fresh from declaring that he could strange a badger with his bare hands, UKIP’s new leader has admitted that since the party is skint and his position is unpaid, he’ll probably have to sell his home to get by. No worries, Henry […]

Our editor-at-large writes the speech he fantasizes Jeremy Corbyn delivering to a rally of his faithful Momentum followers Last week I wrote a speech for Theresa May, which concluded with an announcement that she had decided Brexit was impossible to deliver. Sadly, she didn’t listen, and so onwards she leads us towards the cliff-edge. This […]

RICHARD PORRITT with the week’s big stories Thanks to concerned readers in academia, The New European was among several media outlets to receive a copy of Chris Heaton-Harris’ sinister letter to universities this week. Did this dunderhead Tory really think he could fire off veiled threats to vice-chancellors up and down the country in an […]

America’s culture wars have raged for years, says BONNIE GREER. But Eminem’s intervention is a significant one US art and culture are at war with the US President. This is nothing new. The play MacBird! opened on Broadway not long after Lyndon Baines Johnson assumed the presidency. A huge hit, the play, based on Macbeth […]

The department for exiting the EU has executed a screeching u-turn on whether MPs will get a vote on a final deal before the UK departs the union. Just hours after Brexit secretary David Davis MPs told MPs they may not get to vote on the terms of departure until the UK has already left, […]

MPs may not get to vote on the terms of the UK’s departure from the EU until it has already left, Brexit secretary David Davis warned today. He told the House of Commons’ Brexit Select Committee that the negotiations could drag on to the “59th minute of the 11th hour” and would be “very exciting […]

The Conservative MP who wrote to universities asking for the names of lecturers teaching courses on Brexit and the content of their lessons was doing research for a book, a minister has claimed. Chris Heaton-Harris, a government whip and member of the pro-Brexit European Research Group of Conservative MPs, wrote to vice-chancellors earlier this month […]

Unnoticed by most of the population, the UK has developed a cruel and unjust immigration system, which is ensnaring growing numbers of Europeans. CELIA CLARKE on a scheme which should shame us all It was an email from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) office in Vilnius that confirmed what our legal advisers had been […]

An influential committee of MPs has written to Facebook asking for any evidence it had of Russia using it to meddle in the Brexit referendum. Members of the House of Commons’ Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee have called on the social media giant to hand over evidence of paid-for activity by accounts linked to […]

Come the motoring revolution, the UK will need as little as 5% of the number of cars currently on the road, calculate MARCUS MAYERS and DAVID BAMFORD. The days of car ownership are numbered The traditional model for car ownership is bust. The gleaming steed on your drive may be a powerful status symbol, but […]

A Conservative MP and leading Brexiteer has written to universities across the UK asking for the names of lecturers teaching courses on Brexit and the content of their lessons. Chris Heaton-Harris, a government whip and member of the pro-Brexit European Research Group of Conservative MPs, wrote to vice-chancellors earlier this month asking for the names […]

The outcome of the Brexit negotiations are “up to the UK”, European Council president Donald Tusk said today. In an update to the European Parliament following last week’s EU summit he said the UK would be responsible for whether there would be a “good deal, no deal or no Brexit”. The former Polish prime minister […]

Former – and perhaps future – No. 11 occupants are using uncertainty over Hammond to push their own agenda, says MICHAEL WHITE Under crushing pressure from many sides Philip Hammond made two mistakes in recent days, three if you include dining with George (‘dead woman walking’) Osborne in a public restaurant. In a Sky interview […]

It’s the living, not the dead who should decide this country’s future, says Have I Got News For You writer NATHANIEL TAPLEY The Walking Dead is back on this week. A country in the grip of the undead, whose mindless consumption has caused the end of civilisation as we know it and thrown the world […]

Jeremy Corbyn has called the Prime Minister’s Brexit update ‘Groundhog Day’ and warned her biggest battle is with the ‘warring’ Tory factions rather than the EU. The Labour leader said the Prime Minister is ‘too weak’ to stop the infighting which is increasing the prospect of ‘crashing out’ with no deal. Corbyn’s criticism came as […]

Few footballing powers have fallen as far as the Dutch. NEIL FREDRIK JENSEN asks if there is any way out of the downward spiral For all the pessimism surrounding English football and the gaping void that exists between its current state and its golden era of global domination in 1966, there are some positives. The […]