Politics

Once the British left fought for civil rights, social justice and the brotherhood of man. But now such high principles have been discarded in favour of less grandiose battles, judging by the shenanigans of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs. The group, established by Tony Benn’s supporters in 1982, boasts the backing of 33 Labour MPs with more comrades in the House of Lords. Members spent the weekend organising a letter in defence of filmmaker Ken Loach, who revealed on Saturday that he has been expelled from the party. The group lionised Loach as ‘an outstanding socialist and a fierce opponent of discrimination’ and decried how ‘Ken is expelled

Cabinet office minister Michael Gove has put his £2.25 million west London home on the market. The house, which has a black painted door just like the real No. 10 in Downing Street, is described by estate agents as a ‘big boned period house’ that ‘oozes style’. While Gove may not longer be part of the Notting Hill set, he’s certainly selling at Notting Hill type prices. According to the estate agents, the property is: ‘A wonderful Victorian terraced house with two floors of excellent living/entertaining space and a walled garden.’ The house sale comes just over a month after Michael and his partner Sarah Vine announced they were separating. They have

Among America’s self-described foreign policy ‘realists,’ there is a common trope according to which the best way for the United States to get its allies to do more is to show them some tough love – particularly by doing less. That theory has just been put to a test in Afghanistan. It has failed spectacularly. Contrary to the caricature of the protracted conflict in Afghanistan as a distinctly American endeavour, both the combat operations and the efforts at reconstruction were supported by an extraordinarily diverse coalition of countries, from New Zealand, through much of Europe, to Turkey. Of some 150,000 British troops who served in Afghanistan during the past two

Every now and again, Gordon Brown makes a decent point – as he does today, pointing out that 80 per cent of the jabs have gone to the 20 richest countries. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, World Health Organisation chief, warned in January that ‘even as vaccines bring hope to some, they become another brick in the wall of inequality between the world’s haves and have-nots.’ MPs rebel over cutting aid. But send vaccines to overseas pensioners, when they could be heading for the arms of British schoolchildren? Here, they fall silent. Ethically, it’s a far harder question. When Covid vaccines were still a hypothetical, the moral dilemma was clear. Once a

It is very easy to dismiss Wednesday’s recall of Parliament as a pointless exercise in handwringing that sums up the way most MPs approach foreign policy. There will certainly be plenty of frustrating hindsight on offer from politicians who haven’t taken a blind bit of notice of Afghanistan right up until the point where they scent an opportunity to bash the government. But there are also important questions to be answered that cannot wait for the normal return of the Commons in September. The first is whether there is any likelihood of British and NATO troops returning to the country. This morning on the Today programme, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace

There’s a grim mood in Westminster today. The images coming out of Kabul of desperate Afghans trying to board crowded flights out of the country have been juxtaposed in recent days with the Taliban assuming the trappings of power.  Parliament here in London has been recalled to debate the situation on Wednesday though no one is pinning any hopes on it making any difference in Afghanistan. One MP more affected than most is Ben Wallace, the current Defence Secretary and a former captain in the Scots Guards. While Wallace had left the army by the time troops went into Afghanistan in 2001, he will no doubt be aware of many