On 3 July New York Magazine (not to be confused with the New York Times magazine) published an analysis of the challenges threatening President Obama’s re-election which has a huge resonance for us in...
More than enough has been written from all parts of the political spectrum about the underlying causes of the recent riots, looting and arson all over England. Most of those causes are too obvious...
I venture to disagree with the view expressed on LabourList by Claude Moraes MEP that there are significant lessons to be learned from the horrific mass murders committed, by his own admission, by Anders...
Dear D.I.D.: Here are some reactions to your ideas about a federal system for the UK, as seen from your viewpoint in Canada (itself of course a federation). I appreciate your kind remarks about...
You’d think we hadn’t noticed, years ago, that scruple-free muck-raking newspapers eavesdrop on phone conversations (forgotten Squidgygate already?), or that squalid media organisations bribe the police for information, or that cowardly politicians of left...
In my last post on this blog, I celebrated what looked like the impending abolition of the vicious system of IPPs, or Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection. It seems I spoke too soon. Ken...
There are more good things in what’s left of Ken Clarke’s sentencing reform measures than most liberal commentators admit. The biggest and best is the promise to scrap Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection (IPPs). ...
The UK has become a semi-federation as a result of devolution to three of the four UK nations, but we still lack most of the institutions and safeguards that a federal system needs and...
Yesterday Ed Miliband and the usually equally reliable shadow Justice Secretary, Sadiq Khan, demanded that the prime minister should sack Ken Clarke, the Justice Secretary, over his remarks about rape and his proposals for...
My letter in the Guardian of 18 May 2011 questioned Madeleine Bunting’s description, also in the Guardian, of the option of an English parliament as “unappealing” and her fear that if England had its...