Opinion

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 […]

As the Black Lives Matter revolution brings racism to the forefront of public debate, BONNIE GREER looks back on her life as a black woman in America and using her voice to guide future generations. 1967 in San Francisco, demonstrators and newsmen cluster at San Francisco State College, during a demonstration protesting alleged “racism” and […]

Boris Johnson may have had an easy run with Jeremy Corbyn as his opponent. But, with Keir Starmer leading the Labour Party, the prime minister is now facing a reality check. The story of Boris Johnson in 2019 – and early 2020 – was one of defying political gravity. He began last year as a […]

Labour activist MARTYN SLOMAN on the Labour Together review of the 2019 general election – and why Brexit will be a bigger test for Keir Starmer’s leadership. Immediately after the calamitous 2019 election defeat a group of Labour Party activists gathered round Ed Miliband and undertook an analysis of the result; the group had been […]

Readers have their say on what needs to happen to change politics at the next general election. Andrew Adonis is quite right that we need an electoral pact in 2024 to rid ourselves of these directionless extremists (‘The crucial contest’, TNE #198), but I would suggest he doesn’t go far enough. What is needed is […]

Lib Dem leadership hopeful LAYLA MORAN on the ongoing battle to avoid no-deal and head-off a damaging US trade deal I have always been a proud European and internationalist. My mother is Palestinian and my father was an EU diplomat, so much of my childhood was spent growing up in Brussels and various countries around […]

BONNIE GREER on the lessons to be learned from Heart of Darkness and Gone with the Wind. If you want a deep understanding of the mindset of a Victorian colonialist, racist and imperialist, Joseph Conrad’s masterpiece Heart of Darkness takes you there. Never again will you wonder how and why the ‘Scramble for Africa’, the […]

JAMES BALL on the dangers of falling for the false balance between economy and coronavirus Unless you’re an undertaker, death is bad for business. This blunt truth isn’t some secret handed down from top economist to top economist, upon their initiation to the profession’s inner circle: it’s a statement of the obvious. Our economy – […]

ALASTAIR CAMPBELL on how Johnson is ‘gaslighting’ the British public. And how it’s not unpatriotic to say so So, here we go… another column to write. It’s something I’ve done most of my adult life, starting with a sports column on the Tavistock Times in my first week as a trainee reporter more than 40 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 – […]

TIM WALKER writes of the esteemed actor and comedian Ronnie Corbett, a man full of life and enthusiasm. This is going to take a bit of explaining, but it was The Winslow Boy that introduced me to Ronnie Corbett. The late, great actor and comedian never appeared in the play, but his old friend Edward […]

Statues and monuments have an inherent context, writes MITCH BENN. They honour and elevate people and it’s legitimate to take down those we no longer respect. Like most of you, with the exception of some readers in Bristol, I’ve learned more about the 17th-18th century slave trading magnate (and, not that this changes anything, civic […]

The government has delayed a Lib Dem bill to secure an extension to the Brexit transition period. Acting leader ED DAVEY says it is still putting ideology over the national interest at a time of crisis. Today should have been the second reading of the Liberal Democrats’ Bill to guarantee an extension to the Brexit […]

Readers have their say on the prospect of a no-deal Brexit, and a potential trade agreement with Donald Trump. Francis Beckett’s article ‘We’re being fattened up for a one-way deal with Trump’ was depressing enough, but added to Boris Johnson’s love for all things American, as quoted in his book Life in the Fast Lane, […]

Readers have their say on the Black Lives Matter movement in the UK, with the latest unrest triggered by the death of George Floyd in the US. As British media outlets scramble to find black/brown voices to comment on the horrors unfolding in America, the ‘thank-goodness-we’re-not-that-bad’ tone seems false to me. In the UK we […]

If there were good cops in America, there were not enough of them, says BONNIE GREER. But here is what the police have learned in their turbulent history. I am a member of what has been called the ‘Burn baby burn’ generation who came of age in the mid to late 1960s – even if […]

Debates about statues and social distancing suggest Britain is once again going to miss the opportunity to actually engage meaningfully on the issue of race, says BELLA FRIMPONG. Britain’s history and its informal policy of chronically denying its role in years of racism, colonialism and imperialism and their impacts, are finally catching up with it. […]

The government went into this crisis with the country pulling together. As it falls apart, ministers have only themselves to blame, says JAMES BALL. As it became clear coronavirus would not be contained, would become a pandemic, and would hit Britain, there were those of us who said its arrival would mean doing something previously […]

Boris Johnson is one of the worst Covid leaders on the planet, says ALASTAIR CAMPBELL, Here ten ways the government has failed the country are laid bare. A reminder of the 10-point guide to crisis management that I set out, almost three months ago, when Boris Johnson was assuring us that we should trust him […]

The Liberal Democrat leadership election could decide who becomes PM, says ANDREW ADONIS. With front-runner Ed Davey’s support, Keir Starmer stands his best chance. “Unless the Lib Dems swing decisively behind Labour, both in ideology and electoral tactics, it is hard to see a winning strategy for Keir Starmers Labour party in the 2024 election.” […]

At least in their rhetoric, the European Commission seems to have understood the significance of this crisis, but Quaker MARTIN LENG says a greater international effort is needed to save the world. When coronavirus struck Europe, the EU was mid-way through negotiating its Multi-Annual Financial Framework (MFF), a broad-strokes agreement between Europe’s leaders about how […]