Earlier this year, an internal report from the UK’s Labour Party revealed that some of its influential members worked to sabotage former leader Jeremy Corbyn’s electoral chances in 2017, the election in which he nearly achieved an unexpected victory against Prime Minister Theresa...
Just days after replacing Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the UK’s Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer finds himself confronted with the task of dealing with an alarming report leaked to the media this week. The 860-page document reveals the depth of factionalism within the party and the very real impact...
The morning after the night before is always a difficult moment. In taking stock of what happened in Britain on December 12, a multitude of raw emotions and feelings rush around in the mind. The old adage that the opposition never wins elections, but it is the government that loses them, could...
Elections are almost invariably termed historic. For once, the use of the term is not an exaggeration. When British voters go to the polls on December 12, they will indeed be making a historic choice. Scroll down to read more in this 360° series British democracy...
Although their arsenals are clearly non-nuclear, the popular media across the English-speaking world have acquired a taste for bombarding their readers with “bombshells.” Prime offenders in the US are MSNBC, CNN and Fox News but also the staid Gray Lady herself (The New York Times). In the UK,...
Halloween has passed, the date at which British Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised Brexit would be finalized. The suspense continues and will shortly attain a new level of intensity as the British electorate prepares for what will certainly be the most hyperreal UK general election in the...
In the midst of what has become the excruciatingly hyperreal drama of Brexit, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, hoping to call for a snap election that he may be prevented from having, quite logically finds himself scrambling for votes, especially from the opposition Labour Party....
With elections looming again after the failure of Benjamin Netanyahu to form a majority coalition, The Times of Israel reports on the prime minister’s latest promise intended to seduce extreme right-wing Zionist nationalists: “ith the help of God we will apply Jewish sovereignty to all...
Accusing Jeremy Corbyn of betraying the wise policies of Trump’s US and Mohammed bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia, Tory headliners redefine the UK’s sense of moral purpose. As the Iran crisis begins resembling Iraq in 2003 — which not surprisingly resembled Vietnam in 1965 — the UK is...
When push comes to shove, allies of the US may see their own democratic processes pushed over the side of the cliff. Before being appointed US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo occupied the position of director of the CIA. Such public figures tend to be doubly guarded and prudent, even in their...
The Brexit melodrama has had the merit of exposing how political decision-making takes place, or more accurately how it is prevented from taking place. In an article on April 3, The Guardian highlights (in an earlier edition) not only the quandary of British Prime Minister Theresa May, but also...
Despite its early 20th-century intellectual history, English thought never sought an impact outside Britain. In the 1930s, international battalions of the left flocked to Spain to join the fight against fascism. From France came figures like André Malraux, problematically the first tomb raider...
The Labour Party is the dealmaker when it comes to Brexit. Former Irish Prime Minister John Bruton explains. The worst possible outcome of Brexit for Ireland would be the UK crashing out of the European Union without a deal because Parliament cannot make a decision. The key to avoiding this...
Is there a scale to measure racism in Britain? It appears there may be two. British politics being what it is (and brave is the person who dares to define it), the political stories that grab the headlines day after day tend to be both confusing and confounding. Brexit of course dominates...
The winning French team is populated by players who had been captured by football academies at a young age, and they too had led curiously privileged lives and enjoyed their own elite formation. There was once a certain style. Rereading the 1953 English translation of Albert Camus’s The Rebel,...
