In recent days the Department for International Development and the Conservative Party have each published major policy statements on international development and aid, the former in an impressive new White Paper (pdf file) and...
Perhaps at last something buried deep in the so-called middle east peace process is beginning to stir. First the doggedly right-wing and famously obstinate Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for the first time accepts...
Several propositions are acquiring the status of well-known truths from frequent repetition, despite all being false. For example, — Proposition 1: The News of the World phone-tapping scandal will run and run, eclipsing even...
Bloggers who entrust their political views and comments to the blogosphere must expect to be misrepresented, misquoted, misunderstood by-mistake-on-purpose, quoted out of context and otherwise have their case distorted by other bloggers of a...
Labour party members recently received a circular message purporting to come from Ed Balls, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, although — to be charitable — it seems unlikely that Mr...
Some disconnected thoughts on the present discontents: David Cameron’s merciless, if tiresomely and unnecessarily repetitive, dismembering of the prime minister in Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) over the latter’s obstinate refusal to admit to...
In his statement in the house of commons on 10 June 2009, the prime minister set out a 5-point programme of possible constitutional reform: 1. Reform of the house of lords, with 80-100 per...
In a major Commons statement today (10 June 2009) introducing a national debate on constitutional reform, the prime minister included the system of elections to the House of Commons in his five constitutional topics...
With the agreement of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, I have put on my website the text of a confidential despatch that I sent to the then Conservative Foreign & Commonwealth Secretary in early...
Note: This is the text of a despatch to the then Foreign & Commonwealth Secretary, Douglas Hurd, which I sent in January 1991 shortly before the end of my posting as British High Commissioner...