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Ian BirrellIndependent |
The image is one for the history books: four ageing white men, sitting stiffly in their suits beneath a Picasso portrait of a perplexed-looking woman...
If you want to understand why the Conservatives are in such dire straits, consider social care. This is a significant issue for the country when more...
Last year, Labour MP Kim Leadbeater spoke passionately in a parliamentary debate on mental health care, complaining about lack of support for citizens...
Boris Johnson is publishing his memoir, timed to coincide with the Conservative Party conference, in his usual attention-seeking manner and written in...
Last year Rachel Reeves accepted a gift valued at £330 to attend a concert from the Betting and Gaming Council. This is not unusual: the organisation...
Vladimir Putin is a dismal leader of his country, overseeing a catastrophic military misadventure after crushing his people’s freedoms and pillaging...
Wendy Morton is one of those rare beasts: a Conservative MP who survived at the hands of voters in July. Yet she backed Boris Johnson for leader,...
It seems almost strange that it is less than three years since Angela Merkel retired from leading Germany and Europe. The first female chancellor...
In September 2021, as Russian military forces built up on Ukraine’s border before their full-scale invasion, Vladimir Putin spoke to students in...
Prisons are filling with fresh inmates after the riots as people responsible for the rampage of disorder and thuggery are handed jail terms. There...
It was the glorious night that fed-up citizens faced down the far-right, the feckless and the racist fools whose rampage of violence spread fear and...
So the first crisis of Sir Keir Starmer’s time in Downing Street turns out to be a summer rampage of terror and thuggery stoked by the far-right....
Annette and Kevin Maxwell will never know the extent of the abuse suffered by their son Jonah at his residential school in Bristol since he is...
After staging a failed coup and going to prison, the Venezuelan army officer Hugo Chavez ran to be president in 1998, campaigning against corruption...
Ronald Reagan is routinely hailed on the right as one of the greatest Republican presidents in United States history for his role in winning the Cold...
Already our politics feels a little bit calmer. Labour has kicked out the Tories, Sir Keir Starmer has moved into Downing Street, and the Cabinet...
The reports make the game sound almost professional. Whites took the lead when a “fine, flowing movement” ended with Mark the Younger crossing for...
When Rishi Sunak stood before the dwindling band of Tory faithful at their party conference last year, he spoke about the urgent need for change in...
Nigel Farage has built a brand that has won him fame and fortune based on two key pillars – that he is a fearless defender of democracy and a...
It is 30 years since the citizens of South Africa defied doom-mongers with a largely peaceful transition from apartheid to democracy. This was a...
One of the greatest attributes of populist politicians is their ability to drive foes into such a frenzy of fury and loathing that they end up...
It seems strange to recall the nervous Conservative sense of hope and optimism when the party was ushered back into power 14 years ago by a hesitant...
The day before I arrived in Bratislava, Slovakia, to report on last year’s election, Vladimir Putin admitted his beloved Soviet Union made “a...
Enver Simsek’s life story was one familiar to many migrants. He moved from Turkey to a small town in Germany, then worked hard in a factory during...
Historians will look back in bafflement at the gullibility of Western leaders in their response to Vladimir Putin. When this obscure security official...
The mood was very tense as the votes were recounted in Coventry, then totted up in Sandwell. Then came the rumours, followed by the first pictures of...
The students at Columbia University sat outside their tents, munching on beans and rice as they listened to one of their history professors discuss...
The wily Rwandan leader Paul Kagame has shown great skill at fooling gullible Western politicians into supporting his dictatorship, whether by...
The vote in Parliament last week to impose the world’s toughest smoking ban was a perfect symbol for the state of British politics. Here was a daft,...
Jason Pulman was the oldest of five children, a talented artist who ‘‘loved all the silliness in the world and using it to make all those around...
Six years ago, while on a reporting trip to Gaza, I met a 26-year-old man called Mohammed al-Taluli who had dared to challenge Hamas by organising...
During my journalistic career I have spoken to traumatised people around the world suffering terrible consequences of war, earthquakes and torture....
The Tories are panicking again as they look at the polls, contemplate their looming electoral wipeout after another disastrous week at Westminster and...
Theresa May has announced she is leaving the political stage at the next election while polls indicate that the party she headed for three years faces...
Last week Emmanuel Macron, the French President, engaged in sabre-rattling that set nerves jangling from Moscow to Washington. Speaking at a press...
Adam Kinzinger used to be a mainstream Republican. He is an evangelical Christian and former US Air Force colonel who served as a pilot in conflict...
Volodymyr Zelensky is a bold, competitive and determined man, driven by an astonishing sense of self-belief. These personal traits took him from his...
The scenery of lush tropical rainforest was stunning but the stories of atrocities were disturbing. One mother told me of being raped beside the road...
Dominic Cummings is far from the ideal person to deliver warnings about dangers of misinformation, given his track record. Yet last week he wrote...
Amid so much grim global news, something to celebrate. For the biggest election year in human history, which will see more than half the planet’s...
In May 2020, as the planet grappled with the pandemic, China’s state media declared that there were ‘obvious deficiencies’ in Hong Kong law...
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has made a busy start to 2024 with a general election looming. First came a new year message to voters, insisting...
Two days after Christmas, the South Korean actor Lee Sun-kyun, best known for playing a wealthy patriarch in the Oscar-winning film Parasite, was...
The artists, booksellers, musicians and writers all knew each other well, so greeted each other warmly in the restaurant, cracking jokes as...
The chilly winds of appeasement blow through the West as Ukrainians shed blood in their epochal battle between democracy and dictatorship. Last week,...
Rishi Sunak was right about one thing when he won the top job little more than a year ago. Declaring that his “utmost priority” was to unite a...