Opinion

The Chinese state has had an overbearing, stultifying effect on the country’s musical expression. Yet there have been acts who have pushed back. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports. Confucius said “Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without”, and as Chinese New Year is celebrated this week, the singing of songs associated with the occasion […]

WILL SELF advances a satirical suggestion to solve some of the country’s problems. In the 1990s – as I’ve often had cause to relate – a profound change occurred in British culture. Up until that point British cuisine was pretty dreadful: over-cooked, urine-smelling veg; overcooked, leathery meat, together with piss-poor trimmings – that was our […]

Lionel Barber, former editor of the Financial Times, on the task facing Mario Draghi, the man dragged out to rescue his country. Late last autumn, Mario Draghi sat in his house in Umbria waiting, half in dread, for the inevitable call from Rome. Almost a year had passed since his departure as president of the European […]

Irish politician NEALE RICHMOND on how Ireland has reacted to Brexit. After more than four years of protracted negotiations and preparations, the Brexit transition period ended and reality has begun to set in. Queues at ports and airports, customs charges and trading issues are now the norm for consumers and businesses in Ireland and Britain alike. […]

Covid has damaged populists in power. But it has also assisted those in opposition, especially in Europe where the centre is struggling to protect its population, says NICK COHEN. To say the radical right is deceitful and malevolent is to state the obvious but miss the point. I do not mean to discourage you from fighting […]

Director’s cuts often seem overindulgent and overlong. But as Francis Ford Coppola takes a fresh whack at The Godfather Part III, Richard Luck celebrates 10 occasions where the reprise outdid the original. Truth be told, The Godfather Part III was a pretty decent movie from the outset. Admittedly it had a hard time living up to episodes […]

Italy’s new leader enters office with plenty of experience and esteem. But he will need even more than that to tackle the monumental task facing him, says Esmé O’Keeffe. Last Wednesday Mario Draghi became the latest Italian to receive a summons to the Quirinale and to trek up the highest hill in Rome to the palace – once home to […]

Keir Starmer is facing mounting criticism from within his own party. JAMES BALL assesses how seriously he should take it. Keir Starmer is, we’re told, a politician in crisis. Despite the devastating effect of coronavirus on the UK and on the standing of the government, the Labour Party lags behind the Conservatives in the polls, his personal […]

Lockdown has left much of the arts in limbo, but director Stephen Unwin has been characteristically bustling, says TIM WALKER. Theatres are much like any other places of work and the best directors – like all bosses – create environments in which everyone feels they can succeed. It’s all very well to scream at actors and […]

Fifty years ago Britain underwent an overnight switch to decimal currency. Roger Domeneghetti reports on how it came about, and why its effects still echo in British and European relations.

PETER TRUDGILL on why Australians haven’t developed regional accents… yet. Reader David Handley recent wrote to The New European in response to my column about the origins of Australian English (TNE #225), commenting on its regional uniformity. How, he asked, has Australian English failed to develop distinct regional accents? He is quite right to point to the […]

He has been kicked out of the White House, but Donald Trump is now trying to create a rival presidency – an independent powerbase that is tearing at the fabric of US society, says BONNIE GREER. Like the ham actor who refuses to leave the stage, Donald Trump left the White House in the full bloom […]

IAN DUNT on how liberals can redefine national pride and reclaim the flag from nationalists. Brexit, sold as a commitment to self-government, created an insidious side effect that may yet prove its most damaging legacy. It mutilated British patriotism and turned it into nationalism. In his 2017 book, The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt […]

DAN WHITE gives a personal account of how Brexit is already impacting the disabled. It came as no surprise to anyone in the disabled community that the government had not conducted an impact assessment on the effect of leaving the EU on disabled people, despite concerns around the supply of medical supplies expressed by the Royal […]

Readers are split on whether The New European should focus on rejoining the EU, or whether more time is needed. Congratulations on getting the backers and arrangements in place to enable TNE to continue and move on. What I would like to see is more coverage on how we can get to the point where […]

There’s scepticism from readers that the next leader of Scottish Labour can save the Union. The answer to Maurice Smith’s question, in my opinion, is that the Scottish Labour leadership candidate Anas Sarwar will not. The problem lies in the way the question is understood and answered by so many of your contributors. They seem […]

There is not a journalist alive unaware that Boris Johnson struggles with the truth. Yet this seems to make them less questioning not more, says ALASTAIR CAMPBELL. With an admitted bias born of being columnist and editor-at-large, I would argue that The New European has been among the very best new additions to the UK media […]

As the UK government continue to negotiate Brexit with the European Union, readers ask where are the benefits? Isn’t it about time that the press began to hold Boris Johnson to account over Brexit? Northern Ireland and the current issue over documentation and checks will not go away which will only push us closer to […]

Your weekly check on how Project Fear is becoming Project Reality, selected by Steve Anglesey.  It has been a gloomy week on the sunlit uplands of sovereign Britain as Michael Gove’s war on experts appeared to have been extended to exports. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, in charge of ensuring smooth trade after […]

Former education secretary DAVID BLUNKETT says the government has failed to appreciate the scale of the damage the pandemic is inflicting on children’s prospects. The British, or more accurately the English, handling of the Covid pandemic has thrown up two markedly different levels of success and competence. I’m not talking here about the fiascos relating […]

The French response to Brexit has not quite been a Gallic shrug. But it’s not been far off. PAULINE SCHNAPPER explains the view from Paris. The Brexit deal reached on Christmas Eve was a relief for France as much as for the rest of the EU, both because a deal (any deal!) was better than no-deal […]

We now live in the age of belief, says MITCH BENN, where conviction trumps everything. I’m under very few illusions as to how much influence I bring to bear on events. I can trot out wry observations and snarky comments (sometimes with a tune), so as to (hopefully) amuse the readers of this esteemed publication, […]

The unravelling of the deal over Northern Ireland exposes an unresolved issue at the heart of Brexit that is no closer to being resolved now than it was four years ago. STEVE RICHARDS reports.  What is the future for Northern Ireland in the context of Brexit? If the question were posed in an A-level examination the British […]

The unravelling of the deal over Northern Ireland exposes an unresolved issue at the heart of Brexit that is no closer to being resolved now than it was four years ago. STEVE RICHARDS reports.  What is the future for Northern Ireland in the context of Brexit? If the question were posed in an A-level examination the British […]

Remembering the group of Conservative MPs that their own leader dubbed the ‘Glamour Boys’ and threatened with deselection. In the 1920s and 1930s of buttoned-up Britain, homosexuality was an illicit act, and would remain that way until 1967 when the law changed in England and Wales. Even though gay culture was vibrant, it existed mostly underground, its […]

JAC LARNER and RICHARD WYN JONES on what lessons progressives can learn from the Welsh experience of devolution. The establishment in 1999 of what is now formally known as the Senedd was the culmination of a century and more of argument in favour of what used to be known – more pleasingly, we suggest – […]

JANE MORRICE is a former deputy speaker of the Northern Ireland assembly and helped to implement the Good Friday Agreement. In a very personal essay, she explains how she sees her British, Northern Irish and European identity, in the wake of Brexit. A ‘European unionist’ is everything the name suggests. In the broadest sense, it […]

RACHEL JOHNSON on her latest TV venture, the Covid restriction that most troubles her and a dawning realisation about Brexit. By the time you read this I will have made kedgeree for Mary Berry on national TV as well as a macaroni cheese for Michelin-starred Angela Hartnett, alongside former shadow chancellor, Ed Balls (Celebrity Best […]

The EU has blundered catastrophically over vaccines and behaved badly. Let’s be good neighbours about it, says LIZ GERARD. Well, what do you know! Here at last, to celebrate the double anniversary of Brexit and the UK’s first case of coronavirus, is an example of something the government has got right. Something we have done better […]

WILL SELF on Canada, and the relative his family shipped off there. “What’s the difference between Canada and yoghurt?” is a joke first told me in the 1970s – to which the answer was: “Yoghurt is a live culture.” A half-century on the same sort of snide attitude towards all things Canadian can be easily evinced from […]

ALASTAIR CAMPBELL on what parties of the left and centre can learn from Portugal. As I near the end of my second lockdown German course I am getting closer to the fluency I had around forty years ago before I started losing it (German, that is.) Is it too much if I do my German […]

We are not in a post-Trump era, just because the man himself has left the White House, says BONNIE GREER. When a family member announced that – finally – they were getting married, all of us were really happy. When we found out that they were marrying a Trump supporter, again, everyone was still really happy. This […]