Opinion

Remember the ‘Special Relationship’? It’s one of those phrases that gets a certain kind of British politician bleary-eyed with nostalgia. It’s not as popular as it was during the Blair years, when it was continuously invoked to justify unpopular wars, but the hard Brexiteers are big promoters of the concept. Boris Johnson, well-known Atlanticist, has invoked it. Jacob Rees-Mogg, noted mangler of history, imagines that the British can be the Greeks to the Americans’ Romans (this terrible analogy doesn’t even...

Their collusion was scandalous.

If there is one thing I have learned in recent weeks it is that Brexit, to some people, is worth delivering at any cost. In fact, so fanatical have Leave advocates become that despite all the evidence suggesting that an untidy departure could result in significant job losses, economic hardship, threats to our medical supplies and long-term fiscal damage they are insistent that we carry on regardless. Fred from Hampshire summed up the mood in the Brexit camp when writing...

As reports emerge that the Home Office is slashing a scheme to bring vulnerable unaccompanied children to the UK, four British children the same age as many of the children homeless in Northern France gave us their response after helping their counterparts not fortunate enough to have been born in the UK. Labour peer Lord Alf Dubs, who came to the UK as a Jewish child refugee on the Kindertransport, urged the UK Government to take its fair share of...

With no MPs, no MEPs and no councillors news that the Conservatives are considering an electoral pact with the Brexit Party has been roundly slammed this week. Nigel Farage’s new party has made considerable gains in the run-up to the European Elections and, along with a surge in Remain-supporting parities, threatens to condemn the Tories to fifth place in the polls if results go the way they are expected. A senior Conservative suggested that his party should make a pact...

‘Tis the week before the elections, and the polls the polls are calling. Nigel Farage and his newly-formed Brexit party are in a dominant position as we head towards the upcoming European Parliament Elections, the latest forecasts show, knocking the Conservatives to fifth place and eclipsing Labour – the next closest party – by a remarkable 18 points. But if we have been taught anything by the past few elections it is to take poll results with a bucket full...

“A WTO No Deal Brexit is now the only way to honour the referendum result”, Alasdair Dow of the grassroots cross-party campaign group Get Britain Out wrote on Brexit Central earlier this year. The consensus among Leave advocates seems to be the same. Theresa May’s negotiated deal with the European Union is a betrayal of the Brexit vote, a second referendum would be a betrayal of the Brexit vote and therefore the only way to honour it is to bring...

As a lifelong Doncaster Rovers fan who has collected more wooden spoons than I’ve eaten hot meals I have become well accustomed to losing over the years. I voted for Ed Miliband when he lost the general election in 2010 and for Jeremy Corbyn when he lost out in 2015 too. I voted against Boris Johnson twice in the London Mayoral elections and when he won, on both occasions, I accepted it and moved on. So it makes me chuckle...

Ahead of the Local Elections this week a fascinating piece of footage was unearthed from 1985 in which James Burke appeared to predict how politics would been played out in an internet age. In his words, we would operate on the basis that facts and truths “all depend on what your view of the world is”, and that there may be “as many views of that as there are people”. The proof that his prophecies have come to be was...