Endtimes in Mosul

Patrick Cockburn, 17 August 2017

On 22 May​, Ahmed Mohsen, an unemployed taxi driver, left his house in the Islamic State-controlled western part of Mosul to try to escape across the Tigris to the government-held eastern side...

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The New Deal

Tom Crewe, 17 August 2017

‘Post-truth’ is a faulty concept because it presupposes the existence of shared, accepted ‘truths’ which are actually, you know, true.

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Short Cuts: The Withdrawal Bill

Sionaidh Douglas-Scott, 17 August 2017

The​ EU (Withdrawal) Bill was given its first reading in Parliament on 13 July. This is the most important bill to come before Parliament for decades, but it is only one of many pieces of...

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The Leveller: Famine in East Africa

Ben Ehrenreich, 17 August 2017

In Haro Sheikh​ the journalists kneeled to photograph a tortoise. It was nearly a metre long, with short, spikily scaled legs tucked beneath its shell. A black liquid stained the dry red earth...

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The Age of Detesting Trump

David Bromwich, 13 July 2017

You may curse Putin and Comey and misogyny and Wisconsin, but Trump is marching through the departments and agencies with budget cuts and policy changes that will be felt for years to come.

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Reasons for Corbyn

William Davies, 13 July 2017

The coincidence of the Corbyn surge with the horror of Grenfell Tower has created the conditions – and the demand – for a kind of truth and reconciliation commission on 40 years of neoliberalism.

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Linguistic and cultural differences, scarce public resources, unequal distribution of wealth: all of these exist within as well as between nation-states. So why limit controls to international borders?

Read more about Should we build a wall around North Wales? The Refugee Crisis

Short Cuts: Magic Money Trees

Simon Wren-Lewis, 13 July 2017

‘There is no​ magic money tree,’ Theresa May said during the election campaign when confronted by a nurse complaining about low pay. Yet now that the Conservatives need the support...

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About​ ten years ago, my great-uncle spent a month in a coma. Afterwards, the only thing he could remember was a dream – it wasn’t clear whether it had lasted the whole month or five...

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Our National Hodgepodge

Colin Kidd and Malcolm Petrie, 29 June 2017

In recent decades, the EU has helped to ease tensions at national borders as well as serving as a safety net for devolution. Some kind of substitute – or, more likely, an array of alternatives – will...

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The Choice Was Real

David Runciman, 29 June 2017

One of​ the better arguments for Britain’s leaving the EU was that it might reinvigorate and liberate national politics, stifled for too long by the absence of real choice at election...

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Brexit voters can’t be divided into two – Hannanites on one side and Faragists on the other. The voter who was impressed by the financial argument – Vote Leave’s extra £350 million a week for...

Read more about Now to Stride into the Sunlight: The Brexiters

If Israel were smart: In Gaza

Sara Roy, 15 June 2017

Person after person told me that growing support for extremist factions in Gaza does not emanate from political or ideological belief – as these factions may claim – but from people’s need to feed...

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Short Cuts: Migrant Smugglers

Jérôme Tubiana, 15 June 2017

In 2014​, when migration into Europe via the Mediterranean reached unprecedented levels, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) opened a transit centre in the Saharan city of...

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In its primary use, the verb ‘to starve’ is transitive: it’s something people do to one another, like torture or murder.

Read more about The Nazis Used It, We Use It: Famine as a Weapon of War

Buckle Up! Oil Prices

Tim Barker, 1 June 2017

When​ Donald Trump nominated Rex Tillerson, the CEO of Exxon, as secretary of state, Robert McNally found the choice unremarkable. ‘The closest thing we have to a secretary of state...

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Jeremy Greenstock​ was the UK ambassador to the United Nations during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq and then the special envoy for Iraq, based in Baghdad during the occupation. Obviously...

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What this general election offers in Vauxhall is a choice between voting for the party that helped the Tories introduce the austerity regime which is still blighting lives seven years on, or voting for...

Read more about Between Victoria and Vauxhall: The Election