Opinion

An hour before Theresa May told the House of Commons to vote for the government to reopen negotiations, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker had been in contact to convey that it would be fruitless for her to come to Brussels on the basis of an attempt to reopen the Withdrawal Agreement. Indeed, before the Brady Amendment had even been voted on, all 27 countries of the European Union had already rejected it. An official note seen by everyone outside parliament, it seems,...

Two and half years on from the referendum and those sunlit uplands we were promised are starting to look more like a raging forest fire on the horizon. What was supposed to be the “easiest deal in history” has boiled down to a Prime Minister in absurd denial about a cobbled together compromise that’s deader than dial-up. Apart from some political turd polishing to try to sweeten the dish, the best we can hope for now is the prospect of...

Sir James Dyson, Mike Ashley and the Coates family enjoyed momentary respite yesterday after appearing in the top 50 taxpayers list. Following a few turbulent weeks in which prominent Brexiteer Dyson shafted Britain by moving his company's headquarters to Singapore and Sports Direct owner Ashley shafted the city of Newcastle by skirting on transfer funds again the beleaguered billionaires enjoyed a moment in the sun as part of a cohort of 50 top tax-paying people who contribute nearly £2 billion year to...

Last week the Queen took time out of her busy schedule to appeal to the nation to find “common ground” in a divisive “modern age”. Addressing a women’s group in Sandringham, she said she prefers the tried and tested recipes “like speaking well of each other and respecting different points of view; coming together to seek out the common ground; and never losing sight of the bigger picture”. Her remarks were lauded by Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, who...

A little under a year ago The London Economic exposed that billionaire entrepreneur Sir James Dyson was planning to create hundreds of jobs in Asia after promising Brits in June 2016 that "we will create more wealth and more jobs by being outside the EU". The piece sparked a hysterical response from the firm's PR officers. "No way are we moving jobs to Asia", they said, we're a "British company committed to investing in Britain". And so we retreated. Slightly. But as David...

The only moments in life that count for something are the exceptions. Mondays are Mondays just as Tuesdays blend into every other Tuesday except for the Wednesday that wasn’t a Wednesday because it was the day when, like the title of Joe Heller’s oft-neglected yet brilliant novel, Something Happened. For me, I’d retired from writing without even knowing I’d done just that. An idea would flare in my mind like a match lit by the flick of a thumbnail but...

Most certainly drugs should be legalised, because prohibition causes far more devastation than the drugs themselves. It pushes the production and distribution of these compounds into the hands of criminal cartels. It endangers users and obstructs scientific research and the careful creation of policies created to protect the health of citizens and generates vast untaxed profits which leads to corruption, violence and avoidable human suffering. The 50-year war on drugs has been a disaster. It was obviously doomed from the...

Picture this. Jeremy Corbyn is driving through Islington on constituency business. He pulls out of a side road too fast and collides with another car, carrying a woman and a nine-month-old baby. The woman suffers a broken wrist, but Corbyn and the baby are unharmed. When Corbyn is pulled from the car, he says “I’m such a fool” and tells police he was ‘dazzled by the Sun.’ Two days later, Corbyn is seen driving a new car and not wearing...

This weekend’s revelations that Theresa May is considering axeing the Human Rights Act after Brexit should come as no surprise. The party responsible for the Windrush scandal and other hostile immigration policies have been hamstrung by compassionate elements of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) for years. Proposals to reform human rights law were included in the Conservative party manifesto in 2015, putting in writing age-old promises to “break” the link between the British court and the European court...