The announcement this week that Capital, Heart and Smooth radio are cutting back their local news shows might not in itself seem important — they have loyal audiences keen to know what’s happening outside London — but it’s part of a worrying trend. Over the past two decades, important powers have been devolved to regions
Home Theresa May said in the Commons that if MPs voted on 12 March against her draft withdrawal agreement with the EU, they would be able to vote on 13 March on whether to leave the EU on 29 March without a deal and, if that was not supported, could then vote on whether to
The separation between ‘members’ and ‘strangers’ always struck me as being one of the most archaic aspects of the House of Commons. When Natasha Barley, the brilliant director of the Children’s University in Hull, asked me (as the charity’s patron) to arrange a meeting with the Education Secretary, Damian Hinds, I felt obliged to accompany
The Olympic Committee has added surfing, skateboarding and break-dancing to the events for the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2020. Heaven knows what ancient Greeks would have made of it. The satirist Lucian (2nd century ad) invented a dialogue in which the Scythian philosopher Anacharsis argued with the famous Athenian statesman Solon (d. 558 bc) about
Success of the SDP The breakaway Labour MPs would have an uphill task emulating the SDP’s early success. It fought its first by-election in the July 1981 — losing by 1,700 votes in Warrington. Yet that autumn it reached 50 per cent in the opinion polls, with by-election triumphs following in Crosby, in November 1981,
It’s now or never Sir: I read with great interest Paul Collier’s suggestion (‘Take back control’, 23 February) that Britain should withdraw Article 50 and remain in the EU as a means of obtaining a better exit at some point in the future. This would be a UK humiliated by the inability of parliament to
