Opinion

Emeritus Professor Mary Mellor debunks the myths behind austerity... Austerity - the culling of public services in response to the spike in public spending following the 2007-8 financial crisis - caused widespread hardship. It reflected two myths: that the market is the sole source of funding for public spending and this must be limited because money is in short supply. Neither is true. The market is not the source of all public spending and there is not some scarce essential...

The report concludes, 'Turkey or the United States did not violate their obligation to protect Mr. Khashoggi'. Yet in both cases there were media reports, based on leaks by officials of these nations, that these nations had prior knowledge of what was going down.

We have now exhausted our options to the point where Boris Johnson is about to take a phoney agreement to the EU because his side has lied so much they no longer have any grip on the truth.

I doubt refugees in Calais know it’s #WorldRefugeeDay, but they have still marked the occasion - Border Force officials tell us that 163 people have arrived on the coast of Kent this month, the largest number in any one month so far.  And just like every time we hear a news report about migrants crossing the English Channel, a Home Office spokesman has made the same comment:  "It is an established principle that those in need of protection should claim asylum...

The Conservative’s waved goodbye to Rory Stewart last night, and with it, any hope of realism being part of the Brexit negotiations. The remaining candidates now occupy ground known colloquially as Cloud Cuckoo Land, a state of absurdly unrealistic ideals where people are prone to unsettling visions of grandeur. Jeremy Hunt’s answer to our current political impasse is to renegotiate Theresa May’s Brexit deal with the EU. Michael Gove’s answer is to renegotiate Theresa May’s Brexit deal with the EU....

“Is Labour’s Brexit dilemma being misunderstood?”, Professor John Curtice wrote ahead of the crucial 2017 by-elections in Copeland and Stoke. The feeling at the time was that areas such as Stoke epitomised what the typical Labour voter wanted. Some 69 per cent of the party’s stronghold seat voted to Leave the European Union in 2016, which by default surely made them a party of “working-class leavers”. As it turned out UKIP party leader Paul Nuttall was defeated by the Labour...

It’s a matter of faith among Brexit supporters that failing to obey the consultative referendum on EU membership is an assault on democracy. MPs who actively campaign to stay in the EU are betraying that democracy. Almost every day a Brexiteer or sympathetic news outlet rages against the ‘anti-democratic’ Remain supporters who want a second vote. Putting the questionable nature of the 2016 vote aside, the UK does indeed have a major democracy problem. It’s called first-past-the-post. Voting rights have...

Scotland is about to be governed by a Prime Minister elected by 160,000 Tory members, of which only 9,000 are based in Scotland, from a party that hasn’t won a major election in Scotland in 64 years, to deliver a Brexit that 62 per cent of Scotland’s voters rejected.

The prospect of Boris Johnson running the country looks like an all too inevitable possibility following the first round of votes cast yesterday. Bookies now price Johnson at 1/5 to win the leadership race after he scooped 114 votes out of a potential 313, with Jeremy Hunt (43 votes), Michael Gove (37 votes) and Dominic Raab (27 votes) a long way behind. A lot can still happen between now and the final membership vote that will ultimately install the next...