The Politics of Now: The Last World Cup

David Runciman, 21 June 2018

As the saying goes, hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, and this is the currency in which Fifa likes to trade. But Putin isn’t having any of it. He seems to have treated the award of...

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Will it hold? Will the EU hold?

Helen Thompson, 21 June 2018

If​ the real point of the European Union is to achieve an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe, the British have never seriously wanted a place in it. If we follow the logic, Brexit...

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On the Farm

Daisy Hildyard, 7 June 2018

In​ November, the government voted to let go of a European law which declares that animals are sentient beings. At that time of year the cattle on my father’s beef farm in Yorkshire come...

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Short Cuts: The M5S-Lega Coalition

Thomas Jones, 7 June 2018

It looks​, for now, more than 11 weeks after the inconclusive general election, as though Italy is about to have a new government. On Friday, 18 May, the Movimento 5 Stelle and the Lega Nord...

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The Tower

Andrew O’Hagan, 7 June 2018

I: The FireII: The BuildingIII: The AftermathIV: The NarrativeV: Whose Fault?VI: The RebellionVII: The FactsFilm AudioI: The FireIt was​ a clear day and you could see for miles. From her...

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That was the year that was

Tariq Ali, 24 May 2018

I wrote: WE SHALL FIGHT, WE WILL WIN: PARIS, LONDON, ROME, BERLIN. The vote was unanimous. We were for Utopia.

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In​ her Mansion House speech in March, in which she outlined her plans for leaving the EU, Theresa May stated that she ‘would not allow anything that would damage the integrity of our...

Read more about Without Map or Compass: Brexit and the Constitution

The​ other day, after lunch in the Palace of Westminster, I made my way to the atrium of Portcullis House, where hundreds of MPs have their offices, and settled down at a table which allowed a...

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An Irish Problem

Sally Rooney, 24 May 2018

In the relationship between foetus and woman, the woman is granted fewer rights than a corpse. But it’s possible that the ban on abortion has less to do with the rights of the unborn child than with...

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The two-state solution died because Netanyahu and successive Israeli governments were determined to kill it, and those who could have prevented its demise lacked the resolve and moral courage to do so.

Read more about The Two-State Solution: An Autopsy : An Autopsy

Diary: The Heart and the Fist

Deborah Friedell, 24 May 2018

‘Have I told you about my old friend who’s married to the Republican governor of Missouri?’ Too often, the answer was yes, I had – sometimes more than once.

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Purges and Paranoia

Ella George, 24 May 2018

When military juntas imposed martial law at least there was always the hope that a return to civilian rule would bring a reprieve. Turkey today is a deeply traumatised society.

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Diary: The Marketisation Doctrine

Stefan Collini, 10 May 2018

‘But why​ have they done this?’ Standing in the foyer of the National Theatre in Prague, having just taken part in a debate on ‘The Political Role of Universities?’, I...

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It’s almost as if, on discovering that law alone was too blunt an instrument for deterring and excluding immigrants, the Home Office decided to weaponise paperwork instead.

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James Angleton​, chief of counterintelligence at the CIA for twenty years, was not the ideal spy. The ideal spy is a mouse-coloured blur in the crowd, someone like George Smiley, described by...

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Too Few to Mention: It Has to Happen

David Runciman, 10 May 2018

The likeliest way to overturn the referendum result is to wait until one party or other has taken clear ownership of its consequences. For that to happen, Brexit has to happen too.

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Short Cuts: Labour and Anti-Semitism

Stephen Sedley, 10 May 2018

When​ I was about eight my schoolfriend Harvey invited me to join his Anti-Jew Gang. I was born just after the outbreak of war, so this must have been 1947 or 1948. Harvey hadn’t the...

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Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro’s point is that ‘for all its problems, the New World Order is better than the Old.’ Theirs is a valuable reminder that law matters and that international co-operation...

Read more about Anything Can Be Rescinded: When can you start a war?