Section: UK

As we enter the final decisive phase of Brexit, a few thoughts on what the polling might be telling us about the public’s attitude to leaving the EU.

In the 2012 London Olympic Games, Nicola Adams OBE made history as the first female boxer to win Olympic gold for Women’s Boxing in the Flyweight category. She remains the most successful female British boxer, as a double Olympic champion, but her journey through the ranks came with its knockdowns. At the age of 12, […]

A new group has emerged within the Tory ranks who are attempting to rewrite history under the thinly veiled disguise of standing up for “common sense”. The so-called ‘Common Sense Group’ (CSG) is a relatively new group of 59 Conservative MPs and seven peers. This cabal of right-wing politicians is just the latest page in […]

The chaotic ‘nest of vipers’ in Downing Street burst out into open warfare last night with the shock resignation of the PM’s communications chief Lee Cain and the threatened departure of senior adviser Dominic Cummings and chief Brexit negotiator Lord David Frost. Jim Pickard, chief political correspondent at the FT tweeted: One well-placed Whitehall official […]

One of the single most astonishing things about all the pain we have been through this year is how few people have made the link to the obvious fact that this is an environmental crisis.

Whether or not a deal comes good with the European Union, one thing is certain – the government has failed to prepare despite the fact the decision to leave was made over four years ago.

Following recent criticisms of Home Office refugee policies, particularly in respect of the small boat crossings of the Channel and the death of a Kurdish-Iranian family, a number of people have written to their MPs expressing concern. Some replies have already been received. The answers are broadly similar and conform to Home Office ‘lines to […]

Joe Biden’s victory in the USA has been widely welcomed and comes at a crucial moment. It may have a significant impact on the current EU-UK trade negotiations. The president elect is no admirer of Brexit, or Boris Johnson the living embodiment of it, once describing him as a “physical and emotional clone of Trump”.   […]

The UK is known as a nation of animal-lovers, yet it’s a terrible place to be a wild animal (or plant or fungus). For ours is one of the most nature-deprived countries on the planet, the “green and pleasant land” a pure fiction. Chief responsibility for that lies with the supermarket and multinational-dictated food system […]

“By 2050 – if no action is taken – there will be more than 143 million internal climate migrants.” The World Bank’s Groundswell project has provided even more reasons to reduce your carbon footprint – as if there weren’t enough already. The impact of climate change on humans is an increasingly better known area of […]

Nigel Adams finds himself in The Huffington Post after a freedom of information request (FOI) showed that his Selby and Ainsty Constituency Conservative Association got £10,000 from the government for his Tadcaster office. The money was for business rate relief, part of the government’s support for businesses and self-employed people during the coronavirus shutdown. According […]

For me, journalism has always been about changing things. I didn’t just want to report on what’s happening; I wanted to challenge it.

Every now and again, the BBC bizarrely includes stories in radio bulletins about its inner workings. When they do, it’s always interesting to contrast what is said publicly, with BBC insider perspectives. A radio report last week, about BBC staff being told that disciplinary action, or even dismissal, could follow if they share biased social media, […]

A new report on Brexit, from the Institute for Government, shows that business readiness is our biggest problem as we leave the European Union (EU) and that delays at the GB–EU border are now inevitable in January. Even if a deal is reached at this late hour it will be no magic bullet, as most […]

Measures introduced by Chancellor Rishi Sunak, MP for Richmond, have until now prevented mass unemployment and kept many businesses afloat. However, not everyone is equal when it comes to a place in the lifeboat. Many self-employed, for example, have not been given a seat – as highlighted by the campaign group #ExcludedUK. And despite creating […]

One of the reasons that cynicism has entered politics quite so strongly in recent years is the way most politicians respond to serious problems. The pattern is all too familiar. A horrible disaster strikes. It is announced that an inquiry will be organised to get to the bottom of the issues and make sure it […]

It should not have come to this. The European Union had hoped a future trade deal with the UK would have been signed and sorted by mid-October, when EU leaders were meeting at a European Council in Brussels. But that deadline, like so many others in the Brexit process, came and went; meaning EU negotiator […]

With another lockdown in England starting on Thursday, covid is well and truly back with a bang. It is sweeping the streets, crashing the Test and Trace system and even being carried into parliament by MP Margaret Ferrier. A virus doesn’t spread itself, as the government has repeatedly exclaimed when lambasting young people for house […]

A Women in Football survey recently reported that two-thirds of women working in football have been subject to gender discrimination, with only 12 percent of these cases being reported. In a 2014 study, titled ‘The Experience of Former Women Officials and the Impact on the Sporting Community’, researchers from Trinity University aimed to “explore the […]

How long can the prime minister’s senior adviser cling on? There is a growing rebellion in Tory ranks against the latest lockdown measures, with leading Tories including Sir Desmond Swayne and Iain Duncan Smith in the vanguard. Even the chair and vice-chair of the powerful backbench 1922 committee, Sir Graham Brady and Charles Walker, have […]

The one thing this pandemic has shown us is how much we rely on our emergency services – not just the NHS, but all those who are keeping us safe during these Covid times. So, news that one of our key emergency services – the fire service – has shed more than a thousand workers […]

Next year may be a difficult one for Mr Butler-Adams at Brompton, and plenty of other manufacturers in bicycles and other industries. Those who for years have complained that the EU is a “protectionist racket” may soon find out why.

Hello friends, I’m here today to speak about the shameful and disgraceful and very shameful and utterly disgraceful issue of antisemitism in the Labour Party and how I had nothing to do with it.  Any political party, workplace, church, synagogue, fascist rally or average household in Islington will have its fair share of antisemitic racists. […]

Today’s news that Downing Street is understood to be considering a month-long form of lockdown is no big surprise. But this latest move is already generating a reaction – from those who urged the government to move faster and earlier, to those who do not want to see further restrictions for fear of untold harm […]

Dr Anna Jerzewska is the founder and director of Trade & Borders, a consultancy business advising on the complex issues of international trade. On Thursday she held an all-day webinar with customs authorities from Belgium, Holland, France and Ireland.   Among the issues discussed were the traffic management problems raised by Brexit and for which […]

An attack ad was recently aired against Chancellor Rishi Sunak, criticising him for his wealthy lifestyle, hedge fund background, and public relations team. It was warmly welcomed across the Twitter left. This may not be the most popular opinion, but I think that it was a bad attack, mostly because it was short-sighted. Attacking a […]

While it could be argued that any rational prime minister would have requested an extension to the transition period in July 2020, so that Britain could avoid the double-whammy of Brexit and Covid-19 in winter 2020, I suspect Boris Johnson is content to proceed with no-deal Brexit. This is because it may benefit those who […]

We have been warned about the logistical problems we will face when the transition period ends on 31 December and we formally leave the EU single market and customs union. We know there will be supply chain problems affecting imported goods, including food and medicine. But the logistical nightmare doesn’t stop there and covid vaccine […]

If the home secretary wishes to mend the broken asylum system, she might usefully start with improving the systems and processes directly under her control. In her speech to the Conservative Party conference earlier in October, Priti Patel spoke of a “broken” immigration system blaming “activist lawyers” for the Home Office’s failure to return asylum […]

Algorithms don’t have a great reputation after the exams fiasco of the summer. So, you might think that the UK government would have become just a touch nervous about relying on them quite so naively in the future. In a reasonable world, ministers might have learned that that computer programmers can’t write mathematical formulae that […]