Opinion

Things look particularly bleak this Christmas, but JAMES BALL finds some cause for optimism.  The midwinter is notoriously a bleak season – not for nothing is there a whole song along that theme. Similarly, it’s not coincidental that most cultures and religions mark some celebration of light or of joy in the middle of this […]

Once a fervent Eurosceptic, ED WEST explains why he has come to believe that leaving the EU will be a terrible blunder, in a thoughtful essay that will be a difficult read for Brexiteers and Remainers alike. Like a never-ending television series that should have been cancelled years ago, the Brexit saga reaches yet another season finale […]

Remainers are patriots who will be as pained as anyone by the damage that Brexit is about to cause their country, says IAN DUNT. The trap is right there waiting for us. Next month, Brexit goes from a theoretical issue to a practical reality. It will play out in declining GDP growth, investment, productivity and […]

ALASTAIR CAMPBELL on how the UK needed someone serious to take charge of Brexit – but ended up with Boris Johnson. When Boris Johnson first became prime minister, I called round a few contacts in European capitals, to get a feel for how they viewed what was by any calculation quite a major change from […]

Despite his establishment credentials the author John le Carré remained an outsider all his life, says CHARLIE CONNELLY, and was increasingly radicalised by Europe and Brexit.  There’s a broad perception that people become calmer politically as they grow older, the youthful firebrand activist gradually sensing the flames of radicalism dying down towards a dotage of faintly glowing […]

Today’s PMQs was  – definitely? maybe? – the last of 2020. That makes the session technically the Christmas special, and while, unlike most TV spectaculars, this gratifyingly wasn’t twice the usual length, at least it provided all the catchphrases you’ve come to know and love since Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer came to occupy the […]

As London enters tier three of the coronavirus restrictions STEPHANIE WATSON analyses the impact on psychological thinking. Following an increase in COVID-19 cases, London will be put into tier 3 on Wednesday. While restrictions are slightly looser than the first and second lockdowns, social interaction is being cut, triggering feelings of loneliness and isolation across […]

PETER TRUDGILL on a cheering Christmas tradition. One of the best-loved spoof Christmas carols recorded by the Norfolk-based parody folk-duo the Kipper Family is called Arrest These Merry Gentlemen! Another song in the same vein (from their album The Ever Decreasing Circle) is the Trunch Wassail Song, a folk tune purportedly native to the North Norfolk […]

BONNIE GREER on what Grace Jones has, which Patti LaBelle doesn’t. This pandemic, the lockdown, the whole nine yards of it, can make you look at yourself. Think about things. Like the term ‘auntie’.Because I have never owned property, nor ever had what used to be called ‘a proper job’, most of the people I […]

SAM FOWLES took on Boris Johnson’s government over the prorogation of parliament in 2019 – now he warns of a new battle against the repealing of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act. The Royal Prerogative harks back “to the clanking of mediaeval chains of the ghosts of the past”. So said the great judge Lord Roskill, […]

One reader is against the UK rejoing the European Union, despite being in full support of the project. As I read the columns in TNE #222 – and nodded sagely at Donald Macintyre’s analysis and absorbed the various arguments put forward for re-engaging with, if not re-joining, the EU sometime post-January 2021 – I gave […]

Keir Starmer must not be allowed to ‘fence sit’ on the big issue of the day. The leader of the opposition must stand up not only for the 48% who voted Remain but the overwhelming majority of voters and MPs (including most Labour members and voters) who opposed a no-deal or bad deal, the very […]

It was supposed to be the year to catch up on your reading. Don’t worry if you didn’t get through too many books. CHARLIE CONNELLY has some more to recommend… Sooo, have you read much this year? Like many people I had great ambitions of tucking in to some seriously weighty volumes once the lockdowns […]

Jack Elton-Walters on the confusion sparked by the Covid-19 tiers. It may not be its most controversial aspect, but the government’s coronavirus tier system has served to highlight existing confusions, grievances and out-dated ideas about which county certain boroughs, towns and cities now fall into. Previous to the most recent, month-long lockdown in England, those in […]

Denis MacShane on the late Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, a man who helped modernise France and Europe, and relished an argument and a rivalry. “Your friend, Tony Blair, who does he think he is. He’s now calling for Albania to be let into Europe?” Valéry Giscard d’Estaing stretched out his long legs in the French embassy in […]

Dub London: Bassline of a City – celebrates the best of dub music. Wondering what ‘dub’ is? Essentially, it’s a remix of a song with the vocals (and much instrumentation) stripped away while the rhythm is boosted with added reverb and sound effects. In doing so new soundscapes are created. Dub was first developed in […]

Irish politician NEALE RICHMOND on his sadness as the end of the Brexit transition period nears. When the people of the United Kingdom voted narrowly to leave the EU in 2016, it felt for us in Ireland like they had gone and shot themselves in our foot. There is no such thing as a good […]

Jean-Pierre Melville’s recent work oozes sophistication and turns 50, JAMES OLIVER offers a retrospective. There were those who said Jean-Pierre Melville’s films were all style over substance. Astonishingly, they seemed to mean it as criticism. Few directors have ever controlled the presentation of their films so carefully, erasing the extraneous and obsessively refining what remained […]

Will Self on life moving online during the pandemic. “It’s absurd that they advertise televisions by emphasising their picture quality, but they’re showing you this improved picture quality on your inferior set.” When my 23-year-old said this as we were sat in front of our own inferior box the other day, I felt, simultaneously, pride – and […]

DAVID WARD writes with pain pride after his son Alex entered office with a terminal illness. Just before noon on Friday May 3, 2019, my phone rang. It was my son Alex: “I’ve only gone and bloody done it” he told me. He had just been elected as a councillor in Ashford in Kent. Four years […]

Is it time to take a leaf out of Nigel Farage’s book to force Rejoin on to the political agenda? Ian Dunt is right (“Time for this eerie silence to end”, TNE #222) that no party is currently advocating rejoining the EU. This puts those of us who campaigned for four years, or more, to […]

MITCH BENN on the annual controversy over Fairytale of New York. One of my favourite things about the Christmas season is the way that new Yuletide traditions are always evolving and emerging to take their place alongside the more ‘time-honoured’ ones. A recent addition to the canon of Christmas customs is the online game Whamageddon; as […]

The shows that filled in the visual blanks of the pandemic. As so often, J.G. Ballard prophesied it all. In 1978, the science fiction writer – who has become, posthumously, a sort of laureate of the pandemic and of its social impact – foresaw that television would evolve into something dizzyingly diverse: “[O]ne will have […]

Alastair Campbell on Boris Johnson’s ‘oven-ready’ Brexit pledge – and the ministers who have attempted to spin it. With the possible exception of my good friend Andrew Adonis, has there ever been a politician more misnamed than James Cleverly? Yet it is becoming ever more apparent that in the Johnson government, having a good brain, […]

DONALD MACINTYRE on the squealing and dealing from Boris Johnson’s government over Brexit. We’ve been here before, of course. It was on March 13, 2003, that the cabinet were told “the message that must go out…[is] that we pin the blame on France for its isolated refusal to agree.” This was three days after Jacques […]

JAMES BALL on how the spell is broken for a one-trick phoney. Any man can tell you he can jump off the roof of a building, entirely naked and free of strings, parachutes, or similar, and levitate safely to the ground. An incredibly persuasive man, perhaps backed up by faked video evidence and more, might […]

Readers have their say on the on-going Brexit and coronavirus crises. The pandemic has highlighted the need to compromise, cooperate and collaborate. Without compromise a balance cannot be struck between saving lives and livelihoods. Without cooperation communities will not work with the authorities keeping people safe and the economy supplying essential commodities and needs. Experts, including […]

Readers respond to Rishi Sunak’s latest spending review. The biggest public sector debt in history! What sickens me is the failure to acknowledge the outright lies of the coalition government in cutting back services now seen as essential. Health and social care, police, youth clubs, mother and toddler groups and all the multitude of services […]

Readers have their say on how Labour should vote on any Brexit deal. Let us assume, as Alastair Campbell does, that the government reaches a deal with the EU. It is sincerely to be hoped that the Labour Party does not support any such arrangement. To reject a bad deal is not only in the […]

Not knowing other languages is one thing. Not knowing about them is quite another, says PETER TRUDGILL. I once happened to be visiting the linguistics department of a well-known university in the American Midwest when a phone call came in from the local police station. An officer enquired: “Do you have anyone there who can […]

Donald MacIntyre on how Britain’s reputation is changing in the eyes of the world Although he was one of the most celebrated British diplomats of the era, few now remember how explosive was the leaking of the farewell telegram the UK ambassador to Paris Sir Nicholas (Nico) Henderson wrote about Britain’s international standing for his […]

Lech Walesa helped create modern Poland. Thirty years after he came to power, MICK O’HARE reports on a complex character and his even more complex legacy When Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party was re-elected in October 2019 under prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki it was on a ticket of more of the same. More right-wing […]