Opinion
Calls for unity over the most divisive issue of our generation are futile
The Labour Party features once again on the front page of the Evening Standard today for all the wrong reasons as George Osborne uses divisions over Brexit policy to put the boot in. Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer is reported as saying the party is split down the middle over its key Europe policy. The news comes after Theresa May was accused of being "too busy negotiating with her own cabinet to negotiate Brexit" in Prime Minister's Questions. Whichever...
Brexit leaders prove that the campaign to leave the EU was entirely driven by self-interests
It was with a dismissive sweep that Nigel Farage mentioned that he would just leave Britain if Brexit was a disaster. Speaking on his LBC show the outspoken campaigner claimed he never "promised that it would be a huge success", just that "we will be self-governing". "That’s the point", he said. "I never said it would be a beneficial thing to leave and everyone would be better off". He did say those things, on numerous occasions, but what his comments confirm...
Theresa May’s cowardice leaves Northern Ireland in the dark ages
On 7 June, the UK Supreme Court will issue a ruling on Northern Ireland's restrictive abortion laws. The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) has argued that the law criminalises 'exceptionally vulnerable women.' Abortion is illegal in Northern Ireland except where the woman's life is at risk or there is a serious danger to mental or physical health. Illegal abortions can carry a life sentence. But the court is likely to decide that the issue is a matter for the...
Hate mail, blackmail and a week spent disrupting the right wing narrative
When Tommy Robinson was sentenced to 13 months in prison earlier this week the reaction from the far right was unanimous; the former EDL leader was punished for reporting on a child grooming trial because the British government was covering it up. He was arrested for exercising his right to free speech and sent to prison because Britain has become a police state on the way to imposing Sharia law. Victimhood has become a key part of the right-wing narrative...
The London Bridge attack: Creating a positive legacy from a faceless statistic
The London Bridge attack on June 3 2017 was an atrocity all too familiar, in which three British Islamists, high on steroids and wearing fake explosive vests, brought terror to our streets. They drove a van into innocent pedestrians on London Bridge and then used knives to murder eight people. 48 people were injured. The Westminster Bridge attack, in which four people were killed and 22 injured, is also still fresh in our minds. Yet, as we look back now one year...
Where Oxbridge has failed, people power is providing a route to higher education for the less well-off
David Lammy's critique of the UK's top universities has become a national talking point this week as calls for Oxford and Cambridge to "put their vast wealth to better use by funding sophisticated access and outreach programmes" surface. The debate raised by the Labour MP is almost identical to that made by RH Tawney in 1906, when he argued that the ancient universities were wasting their wealth on scholarships for the wealthy. They should, he said, spread their "roots into the...
The Daily Mail has weaponized nostalgia to fuel fear and resentment
British people are united around the view that immigration has harmed communities and left towns and cities more divided, according to a new "poll" run in today's Daily Mail. The study, dubbed "how change is dividing us", revealed that 63 per cent of respondents believe life in Britain was better in the past and that many believe the nation's culture is being neglected because "very few are sticking up for traditions". The reporter in question must have missed the royal...
50 years after Martin Luther King’s march against poverty, the Poor People’s Campaign once again takes to the streets
During his trip to London in 2005 to support the newly launched high-profile campaign #MakePovertyHistory, the late, great and hugely missed Nelson Mandela said, “Poverty is man-made and can, therefore, be unmade.” Today, 50 years after another great black civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, established the Poor People’s Campaign, in which tens of thousands from all faiths and all cultures took to the streets, the campaign has been re-established. This is something of which you may not be aware, due...
The government is bluffing, but it is time we fold on Brexit
There is an art to persevering against the odds. In poker, perfecting an impassive expression that hides a bad deal can deliver a win even in the most impossible scenarios, but no amount of steely glares can compensate for an empty hand come the flop. The UK is holding a near empty hand in its Brexit negotiations, and it is a gamble that has already cost ordinary people dearly as we progress the negotiations. Earlier this week Bank of England Governor...