OpenDemocracy has published online two excellent articles stating the case for the current humanitarian intervention in Libya from a left-of-centre, reasoned and humane point of view: one by Anthony Barnett (the founder of openDemocracy...
David Cameron had earned generous tributes to his success in securing a tough Security Council resolution on Libya, authorising an air war against Gaddafi: but why did he (and most of the media and...
Reading the papers and the blogs on Libya this week, I find myself increasingly going against the liberal bien-pensant grain. For example, — 1. I strongly disagree with the widespread sentiment voiced in last...
Because of the horrors unfolding in Libya, voices are again being heard calling for ‘humanitarian intervention’ by the west to protect the defenceless Libyan population from their deranged ruler. This activist climate seems to...
Three cheers for The Scotsman, the first of the mainstream media to publish an article that at last spells out some of the questions arising from the contradiction between the Libya-UK Prisoner Transfer Agreement...
It’s sad to have to record that on 10 February 2011 the house of commons debated and passed a motion[1] that asserted two indefensible propositions: that we should continue to deprive almost all prisoners...
The prime minister’s statement in parliament on 7 February about the report by the Cabinet Secretary (pdf) on the newly released documents in the Megrahi case inexplicably ignored the major unresolved issue revealed by...
Is there no end to the muddle and misrepresentations generated by the controversy over the release by the Scottish government in August 2009 on compassionate grounds of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the Libyan...
As widely predicted, the coalition government’s review of the previous government’s counter-terrorism legislation has not had the cojones to recommend the outright abolition of the intrinsically flawed régime of control orders. Even more disappointingly,...
I am fast coming round to Ed Balls, now Labour’s shadow chancellor of the exchequer, finally pitted in one-to-one combat against the mad axeman and economic illiterate, George Osborne. The Tories and their little...