Brexit
The EU and UK are one sentence away from a Brexit deal. Why the games?
Even the most fervent Brexiteer would have to admit to being impressed at the cohesion and chutzpah of the European…
Portrait of the week: More Brexit talks, more French protests and less horse racing
Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, returned from a trip to Brussels and Dublin and hurried to the Commons to…
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Brexiteers have ‘a special place in hell’ – but who else has a spot there?
Places in Hell President Donald Tusk said there must be a ‘special place in Hell reserved for those who promoted…
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What would Keynes make of a looming no-deal Brexit?
‘It is seldom wise to sacrifice a present evil for a doubtful advantage in the future,’ wrote John Maynard Keynes…
The Corbyn crack-up
To say that the May administration is ‘the worst government anyone can remember’ is to abuse the English language. It…
Portrait of the week: Theresa May goes to Brussels and Donald Trump to hold North Korea summit
Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, went off to Brussels again to talk about ‘alternative arrangements’, for which parliament had…
Why Dior loved the English
‘There is no other country in the world, besides my own, whose way of life I like so much,’ enthused…
Europeans can’t understand the existential drive behind the British wish to leave the EU
What can the EU do to help the Britons out of their Brexit quagmire? Until very recently, the answer would…
Portrait of the Week: Brexit rumbles on, a panda escapes and Denmark builds a fence
Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, set off to seek a change to the Irish backstop of the EU withdrawal…
The story of Alex Salmond is (far) stranger than fiction
For legal reasons I shouldn’t say much about the Alex Salmond case, but it does bolster the argument that the…
Why are we allowing ourselves to be held to ransom by has-been Irish militants?
When politics goes round in circles, the columnist inevitably revisits issues that would have been sorted if only everyone read…
The super rich aren’t all bad – some even pay their taxes
Paying tax — which many of us have been doing this week before HMRC’s 31 January deadline — is a…
Theresa May has been given a second chance to save Brexit. She’d better not blow it
Theresa May will soon arrive in Brussels with a series of unlikely demands. She must tell the European Union that…
Europe still thinks Britain will come out worse from Brexit. Bless
In Paris in December, I sat with a journalist friend in a café on the Boulevard Auguste-Blanqui and listened to…
The attempt to bring back topicality to Ambridge has been far too effective
It’s becoming clear that the travails afflicting all the major players in The Archers, Radio 4’s flagship drama, are intended…
Why New York loves John Bercow
‘The British political class has offered to the world an astounding spectacle of mendacious, intellectually limited hustlers.’ This is a…
Is wine an art?
Acouple of lawyers were disagreeing about a matter which could become increasingly relevant. Could a sitting president pardon himself? But…
In defence of Fiona Bruce
Will I be allowed to take my dog to Europe after 29 March? A trivial question, you might think, in…
Letters: my autism is a challenge, not an affliction
Autistic freedom Sir: Jonathan Mitchell, an autistic writer, argues that autism is an affliction and that a cure should be…
Davos diary: A party conference for the guilty rich
Somehow I had managed more than a quarter of a century in journalism without ever going to Davos. It had…
Portrait of the week: May’s historic loss, Brexit chaos and the US shutdown
Home Brexit threw politics into unpredictable chaos. The government was defeated by an unparalleled majority of 230 — 432 to…
It’s not communist buildings that are bleak – it’s capitalist budget hotel chains
A few of us on the Labour left decide to see if it is possible to conjure, from nowhere, a…
