United Kingdom

Boris Johnson may be frustrated by Rishi Sunak's reluctance to fund his increasingly hair-brained schemes, but the prime minister's wife Carrie at least has reason to be grateful to the chancellor.

The PM understands the importance of narrative and has turned government into a soap opera… how long can its leading character last?

Mitch Benn looks at another wild week in politics – including Joy Morrissey MP’s campaign to put portraits of the Queen everywhere, and the Matt Hancock affair PATRIOTISM TEST OF THE WEEK It’s been a terrific week for mandatory displays of fake patriotism, or indeed just another week of mandatory displays of fake patriotism if […]

He might seem to be unharmed by the scandals he presides over, but Boris Johnson’s position is more vulnerable than it looks. The fall will come, and it will be swift, brutal and comprehensive

British politics now exists in a moral vacuum. It cannot last

A woman who has been waiting more than four months for her EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS) application to be processed has described her experience as “incredibly frustrating” and said she feels like a third-rate citizen. Daria Riabchikova applied for pre-settled status in mid-February as the partner of an EU citizen living in the UK, and […]

Brexiteers promised mobile phone roaming charges would not return if we left the EU. It was just another lie It has been a gloomy week on the sunlit uplands of sovereign Britain, where mobile phone users are discovering what Matt Hancock has already learned: Roaming can be costly. If UK tourists are ever allowed into […]

The New European has been praised for having some of the best front covers on the newsstands. And now, after five years, we’re looking to declare the best cover of all time.  We’ve painstakingly whittled down the selection to just ten out of 250 editions, with the readers now being given their opportunity to vote […]

More than 100,000 people have waited for more than three months for their applications to the EU Settlement Scheme to be processed, according to official figures obtained by a think tank. Some 102,000 EU citizens and family members, including 23,900 children, had applications outstanding for more than three months as of May 7, IPPR said. […]

TIM WALKER on Amélie the Musical at the Criterion Theatre in London. An admirable effort, but for what purpose? I counted 16 cast members on the stage in Amélie the Musical and I was stunned. It’s the sort of thing that, before the pandemic, I would have taken for granted. Now, I find myself fixating on the arithmetic: West […]

GAVIN ESLER on the frustrations of political debate in an era where reason counts for little Recently an American reader sent an email to my website angrily denouncing a newspaper feature I had written. It was about gun control, or rather the lack of it. I’ll call him ‘John’ and he wrote: “I have lived in Texas for […]

The much-discussed culture war is being manufactured by the right, in order to obscure the real wounds in society The Remainers have been routed, the immigrants outed. Jeremy Corbyn has gone and Keir Starmer never really arrived. Everything should be wonderful in Great Borisland. But it isn’t, so who is to blame? The kraken wokes: […]

Five years on from Brexit, the issue is far from being “done”, despite promises from Boris Johnson.

The Chesham and Amersham by-election results show what can be achieved from tactical voting

With over 84% of Japan still waiting for their first jab, why are the Olympic Games being held there? Is the sporting world, and compliant politicians, playing fast and loose with the pandemic? The European football tournament across 11 countries, the Copa América in Brazil, the fast-approaching Tokyo Olympics, might all be seen as brave defiance […]

John Blankenstein was back-page news when he took charge of England’s first match at the 1992 Euros – but it wasn’t his refereeing the newspapers were interested in… When England faced Denmark in their opening match of the 1992 Euros, many tabloid-reading fans knew as much about the referee as they did about the Danes. […]

Megan Nolan on Believe Me, a show which seems to stray the wrong side of the fine line trod by true crime series In Tampa, Florida, in 1984, 17-year-old Lisa McVey (now Lisa Noland), suffered an unimaginably extreme trauma after being kidnapped by the serial killer Bobby Joe Long. Over the course of her 26 hour […]

PETER TRUDGILL takes on the linguistic purists once again for their attachment to words’ ‘true’ meanings There are some pedantic people around who reckon that it is wrong to use the word aggravate to mean ‘irritate, vex’ or ‘annoy’ – as in “please stop doing that, it’s very aggravating!” This is probably the most common usage of the word […]

The Lib Dems' by-election victory was morale-boosting for opponents of the government, but the most significant action is needed elsewhere

Mitch Benn looks at Dido Harding's attempt to become chief executive of the NHS in another look back at the week in politics

The news that John Bercow was joining the Labour Party came as much a surprise to Sir Keir Starmer as everyone else.

Home secretary Priti Patel has said that British nationals living in Europe are having difficulty accessing benefits, services, and jobs. Patel accused the EU nations of hypocrisy and of treating Britons unfairly, exactly five years after the country voted to leave the bloc. She said that “a number of reported instances of UK nationals in […]

Jason Solomons meets Ben Wheatley, the director behind films like Kill List, Sightseers and Free Fire, ahead of the release of new movie In The Earth Everyone went to the woods in lockdown. Remember all those walks, those endless trudges through mud and twigs and leaves and into forests you’d never bothered to visit, dragging […]

A new exhibition celebrates the pioneering British artist Eileen Agar and her sideways look at the life aquatic Seven months before the outbreak of the Second World War, left wing and anti-war artists exhibited together at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. Henry Moore, Victor Pasmore and Vanessa Bell were among those contributing some 200 works to the exhibition […]

The food industry is predicting a nightmare for British customers, with price rises and empty shelves caused by Brexit It has been a gloomy week on the sunlit uplands of sovereign Britain as customers digest mixed news about Brexit’s impact on food. The downside is that your weekly shop is going to cost more; the […]

Will the loss of Simon Rattle be London’s musical gain? UK music critics have been gnashing their teeth at the news that Simon Rattle will leave the music directorship of the London Symphony Orchestra and beetle off to Bavaria. Heading to Germany to flee underfunding in the homeland is a tradition for money-conscious European musicians, […]

Emerging from his party’s recent electoral victory in Chesham and Amersham, Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey has ruled out the possibility of an alliance with Labour.  On LBC‘s Swarbrick, Davey said that “there were quite a lot of Labour people and Green people who voted for us very comfortably, partly because they could see that […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on an award for translated fiction that is gradually growing in stature, and its very worthy winner While most of the annual book award talk is naturally focused on the Booker Prize for Fiction there are other gongs whose gentler tones occasionally penetrate the literary din. The Women’s Prize for Fiction grows in […]

Tim Walker reviews After Life at the National Theatre – and only awards it one star. The National Theatre re-opened its doors last week with a show called, appropriately enough, After Life. The venue has itself been hovering between life and death for a very long time, like the characters in Jack Thorne’s play, and even its […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the pacifist campaigner Bertha von Suttner, a woman not intimidated by anyone she met, even the most powerful men in the world

PETER TRUDGILL on how bottlers became butlers There are about 45,000 people in Britain who bear the surname Butler. In comparison, there are a quarter of million Browns and half a million Smiths. But 45,000 still seems to be rather a high number if we assume that all of our contemporary Butlers are descended from men who […]

Half a decade after the referendum, the economic hit to the UK caused by Brexit is becoming clearer. But it will be years before the true impact is understood It has started already; you will have noticed it yourself; the pro-Brexit press is starting to write those articles we all knew were on the way… The […]