Monthly Archives: November 2015

With each misstep, Jeremy Corbyn is handing Britain to the Tories

There is rage coursing through the veins of today’s Labour party. Even before the latest act of self-laceration over Syria, it’s been bursting out from all but the truest of true believers in the new leader: rage, despair and bewilderment at whatever new low has been plumbed.

Published by: The Guardian

Three-minute video analysis: George Osborne’s autumn statement is a big gamble

Opinion editor Jonathan Freedland and economics editor Larry Elliott discuss the impact of George Osborne’s autumn statement and comprehensive spending review. The chancellor abandoned planned cuts to tax credits and police budgets after receiving healthier than expected projections of future public finances. But is it a gamble that will pay off for the government, and him personally?

Published by: The Guardian

Let’s deny Isis its binary struggle – and celebrate the grey zone

The grey zone is where I want to live. Islamic State hates it, that place between black and white, where nothing is ever either/or and everything is a bit of both. Those who have studied the organisation tell us “the grey zone” – Isis’s phrase – is high on the would-be warriors’ to-eradicate list, along with all those other aspects of our world that so terrify them: women, statues of the past, the pleasures of the present.

Published by: The Guardian

Diaspora Jews offer a rare chance for hope in the Middle East

Diasporas can be trouble. Whether it was the German-Americans who agitated to keep the United States out of the war against Hitler, the Irish-Americans who bankrolled the IRA’s “armed struggle”, or the Cuban-Americans who lobbied to keep the US shackled to a pointless embargo of the island, émigré communities have a chequered record when it comes to the influencing of foreign policy.

Published by: The Guardian

The spooks will keep spying on us Brits: we clearly don’t care

I’m taking a wild guess here, but I reckon that little camera on your computer or phone is not covered up by black tape. I also suspect that, were I to look up your house on Google Street View, I’d be able to see it clearly, and not be confronted by a fuzzed-out blur. And, pushing my luck, my guess is that when the census form plopped on to your doormat in 2011, you duly filled it in and sent it back.

Published by: The Guardian