On 16 January 2021, Robert Jenrick, MP – Boris Johnson’s Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government – published a now-infamous opinion piece in The Telegraph, denouncing a recent decision by Birmingham City Council to give aspirational names –...
I work in Parliament where, like other public sector workers, I am bound by a contract of “political impartiality”. This applies not only to our work, but we’re also prohibited from participating in certain civic activities like signing petitions, engaging actively in...
Extinction Rebellion protestors in London. Credit: Stefan Müller ‘Knowledge is power,’ says the scheming courtier Littlefinger to Queen Cersei Lannister in an iconic Game of Thrones scene. Unimpressed by a thinly-veiled threat to reveal her secret, Cersei orders her...
City of London at night. Credit: Colin The UK has finally left the EU. Out of the single market and the customs union, the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) reached on the 23rd December 2020 now forms the basis of the new UK-EU relationship. For many, we have...
Discussions between Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron. Credit: UK Prime Minister The country seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief when Boris Johnson finally struck his trade deal with the European Union (EU). According to conventional wisdom the signing of...
Donald Trump at Basel Fasnacht Carnival (Carnaval.com. CC2.0) Here in the United States, we have been awash in conspiracy theories for quite some time. Even before the rise of Donald Trump, conspiratorial ideation (as the psychologists call it) was the worldview of a...
Credit: Robert Firth and Block the Block On Manchester’s Oxford Road, in the city’s university district, there is a building that represents the council’s vision of the student housing of tomorrow. From the outside it is tall, grey and rectangular. But inside it has...
EndSARS protestors. Credit: TobiJamesCandids ‘Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it,’ wrote Frantz Fanon. It has been 60 years since Nigeria achieved its independence from Britain, yet these words reverberate...
At the end of 2019, nearly 80 million people worldwide were forcefully displaced because of war, occupation, extreme poverty and/or the climate crisis. It is hard to comprehend the scale of such displacement. A number equivalent to the combined populations of the UK...
Tahrir Square, July 2011. Credit: Ahmed Abd El-Fatah The ‘coldness’ of what some commentators now dub the ‘Arab Winter’ is felt most chillingly in Egypt, arguably the largest and most globally significant of the revolutionary theatres of a decade ago. No fewer than...
Illustration by Intifada Street On 16 February 2019, in Kherrata, Algeria, the city where French colonial troops carried out an infamous massacre of pro-liberation protesters in 1945, hundreds of people took to the streets once again to express their anger. The...
Graffiti supporting MAS (Francoise Gaujour/ CC2.0) On 18 October 2020, the left returned to power in Bolivia in an election won overwhelmingly by Luis Arce, the candidate of Evo Morales’ party, MAS (Movement for Socialism). The victory put an end to the right-wing de...