The people of the north-east of England voted in a referendum on whether they wanted a regional assembly; they didn’t. Forty-seven Labour rebels voted for a complete ban on parents’ smacking when the Commons passed a Bill limiting chastisement of children. Mrs Tessa Jowell, the Secretary of State for Culture, told the Commons during the
Not long before midnight on Tuesday, a mood of dogmatic certitude overcame the throng of British MPs, ministers and journalists assembled at the traditional election-night party at the American embassy in Grosvenor Square. We knew that John Kerry had won, and dismissed with knowing contempt the warnings of our hosts — whose election, after all,
While the world’s eyes have been on polling booths in the back streets of Ohio, the British political scene may appear to have been becalmed. But it isn’t so. In the past week a couple of notable salvoes have been fired in the direction of the government’s economic policy, which by rights ought to inflict
Israel’s rapacious wall Anton La Guardia (‘A just wall’, 30 October) is spot-on in pointing out that Israel’s brutal wall is pushing the Palestinians ‘into reservations’. I have just returned from a week in Bethlehem, where I was warmly welcomed as a Jewish participant in the Olive Harvest Campaign, which calls on international volunteers to
