That's all very well, David Cameron. But it will be as effective as Anthony Blinken saying to Netanyahu that Israel must do more to protect innocent civilians. Israel is paying absolutely no attention, because Netanyahu knows how high the stakes are for the US if Iran gains power in the region. Houthi chiefs have already said they'll carry on the attacks. Yes, their attacks have been on commercial shipping but now they're saying they'll go for Israeli ships, which will make them heroes in many people's eyes. They don't care about a show of force from the US and the UK. In fact, it gives them ..read more

What a knife edge drama. First the government was going to forcibly remove a hundred asylum seekers to Rwanda. Then they realised that a few might be real victims. Ninety-three of them, as it happens. In the face of national and international outrage, including from the Archbishops of York and Canterbury and all 25 bishops in the House of Lords, the plan stayed on course. Come hell or high water, Ms. Patel and Mr. Johnson insisted that these deportations – all seven of them now – would magically stop other asylum seekers from trying to get here and better still, put a stop to people ..read more

   This morning I learned, from a comment left on an Independent article, that the paper is owned by Alexander and Evgeny Lebedev and controlled by the latter. I've been subscribing for a couple of years but today I cancelled, and subscribed to the Guardian instead.  Vladimir Putin is a psychopath who has committed countless, savage war crimes, for which he bears responsibility, but it's also true he has only been able to acquire the power he has now because in the West we've enabled him with our dependence on Russian resources and our qualified 'condemnation' bred o ..read more

Dear Harriett Baldwin, I am writing to you as your constituent. I struggle to give adequate expression to the outrage I feel at the hideous abuse this whole country has been subjected to by the over-entitled, lazy, egotistical, brazenly deceitful Boris Johnson. To make things worse, Conservative MPs hiding behind the Sue Gray 'investigation' are rubbing salt into a very painful wound. Pretending that anything will come of it, or that this deplorable PM is capable of change or has any desire for it, is a shameless insult to our intelligence. It doesn't take genius to know that Sue Gray's wor ..read more

Sometimes things don't go, after all, from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail. Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well. A people will sometimes step back from war, elect an honest man, decide they care enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor. Some men become what they were born for...                                                        From "Sometimes" by Sheenagh Pugh President Joe ..read more

House Democrats have introduced an Article of Impeachment against Donald Trump for high crimes and misdemeanours, charging the president with “inciting violence against the government of the United States” and including a reference to the 14th Amendment, which prohibits anybody who has engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the US from holding future office. The measure has 218 co-sponsors to date, enough to guarantee passage, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) has said that if the Vice President doesn’t invoke the 25th by Wednesday, the House will move forward with the impeachment. Wa ..read more

The Prime Minister has treated the British people with contempt. One rule for Dominic Cummings, another for everybody else. pic.twitter.com/XIFCztZnbu — Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) May 24, 2020 It's pretty much universal: Boris Johnson's support of Dominic Cummings is a suicide move. A petition calling for a public vote of no confidence in the PM has 107,000 signatures so far and cross-party calls for Cummings to go are burgeoning out of control. Nineteen Conservative MPs have gone on record.  International press is scathing of Johnson. So is the Church of England. Thirteen ..read more

We need enforced social distancing. We need protective kit for our NHS staff. And we need testing to happen on a mass scale. pic.twitter.com/KO51XTcvX4 — Jonathan Ashworth (@JonAshworth) March 23, 2020 “The UK decision to abandon tracing on 12 March 2020 is widely viewed as one of the most serious mistakes of this crisis.” – Jonathan Ashworth, MP, Labour Shadow Health and Social Care Secretary It's well known that if you don't learn by your mistakes or those of others you will repeat them and every time you do the consequences will be increasingly disastrous. It's been the modus operandi ..read more

In the 2019 general election Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party had its most crushing defeat since 1935, handing Boris Johnson the gift of a lifetime – absolute control in Parliament. Corbyn resigned and the shattered Labour party held a leadership election. On 2 April Keir Starmer won by a landslide. Hope flickered that the next election could be a win for Labour. Then Covid-19 hit us between the eyes. Despite the shambling incompetence and criminal negligence of Boris Johnson and his government that has landed us in the unenviable position of being the worst hit in Europe, opinion polls consist ..read more

Embed from Getty Images It takes courage to speak to truth to power when you're the lone voice in an entire political party but Rep Justin Amash is undaunted. The only Republican to call for Donald Trump's impeachment, he held a town hall in Grand Rapids Michigan on May 28 and drew standing ovations from a crowd of about 900. Afterwards, he tweeted a long thread highlighting how Attorney General Barr distorted the truth of the Mueller Report to protect the president from impeachment. It may have worked in the interim, primarily because Democrats are holding back on making a commitment that ..read more