Politics

By Professor Christopher H. Bovis, Professor of International and European Business Law, University of Hull Inevitably, the question of UK membership of the European Union will be centred on two issues: The need for reform of EU institutions and the way the EU is governed The ability of the UK to influence EU decisions Reform is badly needed The European Union is malfunctioning. It has lost the zest of the “common market”,becoming instead a self-fulfilling prophesy of political union with disproportionally...

By Elsa Buchanan, International Politics Correspondent  In a bid to fight the recrudescence of radicalisation on its territory, the French government is launching its own “anti-propaganda” online platform under the hashtag #StopDjihadism. “Search for paradise and find hell: the jihadist propaganda wants to convince by describing a misleading " ideal world “. Recruiters deceive people by promising them a future, an ideal or a cause to defend, where they the only thing they will encounter is manipulation, barbarism and death,”...

By Helen Duff An instinct we’ve all felt at some time, whether tripping over the flat-as-a-pancake pavement – “must be something wrong with my shoes. No, seriously, these shoes have been playing me up for ages. It’s got nothing to do with the way I walk; I walk well, better than most, in fact. These shoes are just clinically defective” – to revealing something far too personal to the family dentist – I’ll let you fill that gap in for...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor I remember being at school and being caught throwing some chalk at a fellow pupil (that shows my age and level of rebelliousness). I denied it even though I had done it and everyone knew I’d done it. The more they asked the more I refused to take the blame and the worse it got. Well that is what happened to Ed today. It isn’t the initial problem, it’s the lying that makes it worse....

By Jack Peat, Editor of The London Economic    On Tuesday afternoon England and Nottinghamshire cricketer Stuart Broad sparked outrage by Tweeting about the so-called privileged position of people on the minimum wage in Britain. The problem with statistics, as Zoe Williams of the Guardian soon pointed out, is that you can use stats to prove anything if you’re willing to haplessly discount good sense and judgement; the minimum wage in Gabon is £3,672 but a suburban one-bedroom flat there...

By Elsa Buchanan, International Politics Correspondent  A Tories U-turn vote on fast-track fracking is being dubbed a ‘huge victory’, but campaigners say now is not the time to celebrate. The government made a major U-turn on plans to fast-track UK fracking after accepting Labour proposals to tighten environmental regulations on Monday (26 January). Campaigners welcomed the changes, describing the vote as “mark a huge loss for the fracking industry”. “This is a win for the people-powered anti-fracking campaign,” said Martin...

By Ben Gelblum Remembering the work of pioneering refugee human rights advocate Helen Bamber She helped the orphans of the Holocaust rebuild their lives. Then later, the tortured, broken survivors of Pinochet, the Argentinian junta, African and Middle Eastern conflicts, and a modern British approach to refugees that "disbelieves, destitute and detains" them. Emma Thompson led tributes to her close friend and advocate for victims of torture, the late Helen Bamber at a packed St-Martin-In-The-Fields in Westminster yesterday. Thompson, fellow...

Written by Max Bluer Since at least 2011 it has been clear that the break-up of the modern state of Iraq into its constituent ethnic territories is a distinct possibility, one only strengthened by IS and their dramatic gains across the region. Although many in the Western world have been fretting about the break down of the artificially imposed borders of the contemporary Middle East, the historical reality is that Iraq has always been a fractious and divided country. Its...

London Mayor Boris Johnson has removed fencing on Parliamentary Square that had been erected to block Occupy Democracy's access after a successful appeal by Liberty and Occupy Democracy. The Mayor has backed down after a judicial review was launched against Johnson and the Greater London Authority arguing the fence is an illegal interference with their right to protest based on the 2012 UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly which states that 'the exercise of fundamental...