Lines of poetry quoted by F D Roosevelt to Churchill and by Churchill to Roosevelt, and quoted in Churchill’s wartime speeches, have acquired a huge emotional; charge for older people from that wartime context. Do Bush and Blair exchange poetry, and if so what poems would be appropriate? [More >>>]
Tony Blair’s almost-apology on behalf of Britain for the slave trade, for which neither he nor other Brits alive today bear any responsibility, devalues the concept of ‘apology’ and exemplifies the ignorant and ahistorical application of modern ethical values to those of an earlier age when slavery had both legal and biblical approval. Better to tackle current slavery, practised in various parts of the world to this day [More >>>]
A formal FCO briefing paper on the prime minister’s website says that our troops will stay in Iraq as long as the Iraqi government wants them to remain — an outrageous abrogation of the british government’s responsibilities [More >>>]
It's hard to know whether to laugh or weep at President George W Bush's gut-wrenching public appeal for "any idea or suggestion" from anyone, anywhere, that might get the mighty United States out of...
Three commentators in the liberal press (Polly Toynbee, Mary Riddell, Nick Cohen) have recently attacked fundamental principles of liberty, civil rights and the rational society in implausible terms at the very time when these principles need to be most robustly defended [More >>>]
Saddam is a murderous monster fully deserving punishment, but the death sentence at the end of a chaotic shambles of a show trial pre-ordained and organised by the Americans is a moral obscenity as well as another act of political folly [More >>>]
Stephen Grey, principal exposer of Extraordinary Rendition, chronicles this criminal enterprise in a highly readable but chilling book, ‘Ghost Plane’. The moral: never trust even the most benign government with sweeping powers that will sooner or later be exploited and abused by a successor. [More >>>]
Here are the names of those MPs who voted for an inquiry into the government’s conduct over the Iraq war, including a dozen intrepid Labour MPs, and the names of the 298 who either chickened out or valued their ministerial salaries more than their consciences (perhaps an unduly harsh way to put it?). [More >>>]
The Americans have no business attaching unacceptable conditions to the release of former residents of the UK from Guantanamo: their obligation is to close it. That they are deemed not to pose a serious security threat makes their detention in Gitmo even more scandalous. [More >>>]
Q. What's the connection between (1) the public comments on Iraq policy by General Dannatt, the Chief of the General Staff, and (2) the television comedy drama "The Amazing Mrs Pritchard" in which a...