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...

Read more about Short Cuts: Parliamentary Priorities

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.

Read more about Weaponising Paperwork: The Windrush Scandal

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...

Read more about The Monster Plot: James Angleton, Spymaster

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?

Where to begin? After Boko Haram

Adewale Maja-Pearce, 26 April 2018

Whatever becomes of Boko Haram, a greater threat to stability in the country as a whole, not just the north, has begun to emerge: a group known to Nigerians as ‘Fulani herdsmen’.

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If​ 2016 was the year of the crime, then 2017 was dominated by the police investigation. In the eyes of most commentators, there were two prime suspects: the responsibility for the Brexit vote...

Read more about Jailbreak from the Old Order: England’s Brexit

The Great Sorting: Urban Inequality

Ben Rogers, 26 April 2018

Richard Florida​ has been having second thoughts. In 2002 he argued in The Rise of the Creative Class that the future of advanced economies lay not in manufacturing but in high-skilled areas of...

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When​ I first visited Kurdish-held territory in northern Syria, early in 2015, it was rapidly expanding. With the help of massive US air-power, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG)...

Read more about Survivors of the Syrian Wars: Four More Years in Syria

On Strike

Malcolm Gaskill, 5 April 2018

The university strikes​ reached the end of their fourth week just before the start of the Easter break. More than a million students at 65 universities had been affected and, according to the...

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How to Solve the Puzzle: On Short Selling

Donald MacKenzie, 5 April 2018

It’s hard sometimes not to think that most short sellers would have become richer, worked less hard, and suffered less psychological pressure, if they had chosen a career in conventional investment...

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