Can elected mayors square the vicious circle?
On Thursday, 10 British cities will vote on whether to have an elected mayor. Personally, I hope they vote yes – because it might be the only way to square one of the most vicious circles in British...
View ArticleWhy does the state encourage people to vote?
I love elections – it’s like The X Factor for intelligent people, filled with drama, anguish and personalities, and all of it decided by the public. Now not everyone cares about music competitions, and...
View ArticleTwitter row reveals the trouble with Pakistan
If ever there was a metaphor for Pakistan's woes it was yesterday's farcical Twitter blackout. An affront to religious or cultural sensitivities prompted a knee-jerk ban on Twitter, which was feebly...
View ArticleThe unexpurgated wisdom of Chen Guangcheng
Sometimes in journalism it is best to let people simply speak for themselves. Yesterday I went to the first major public engagement of Chen Guangcheng since he left China to study for a while in the US...
View ArticleLord Mandelson and the cult of the wise men
It's with a small shudder that I write these words, but I'm with Lord Mandelson and Richard Branson. British aviation policy is completely broken, and we do need to get an urgent grip on the situation...
View ArticleOn Ukip, democracy, gay marriage and the death penalty
I read the word "undemocratic" fairly regularly, usually in the comments underneath these blogs, but often in the blogs themselves or elsewhere in the great internet pontificatosphere of which I am a...
View ArticleCongratulations, gay marriage campaigners – you have completely destroyed the...
I know the only thing you’re allowed to say about gay marriage is “Yay!” and that if you say anything else you’re a weirdo hateful bigot. But permit to make just one non-yay-based observation about it....
View ArticleBarack Obama: the voice of expediency
Another day of foreign policy hand-wringing from the Obama administration – this time over Egypt and whether the ejection from office of President Mohamed Morsi by the generals in Cairo constitutes a...
View ArticleHow easily self-proclaimed democrats can be made to back a coup
The original justification of the coup in Egypt was that it would 'restore order'. In the event, it led to unprecedented unrest, violence and repression. What is almost worse, it vindicated the most...
View ArticleThe Tories' obsession with their 'brand' patronises voters by treating them...
To see how hollowed-out and consumerist British party politics has become, look no further than the discussion of the Tory Party “brand”. Nick Boles, the Tory moderniser and government planning...
View ArticleWho was the greatest champion of democracy in 2013? Unbelievably, the Muslim...
Looking back over 2013, what person or organisation has done the most to preserve the ideals of democracy and freedom? Who should win the prize for standing up for democratic rights in the face of...
View ArticleBritish democracy is dying, replaced by a smug, self-serving technocracy
“The age of purely representative democracy,” Peter Mandelson once told us, “is slowly coming to an end.” And he was right. Throughout the Western world, public policy choices which were once in the...
View ArticleFor the first time since the fall of Western communism, the value of...
Martin Wolf had a typically wise and trenchant op-ed in the Financial Times yesterday on the difficulties which face newly democratising countries, from Ukraine to Egypt. He rightly identifies four key...
View ArticleElections are not the problem in Iraq – it's the parties
Tomorrow is election day in Iraq, one of the few days in the year when the chances of getting hit by a car bomb are fairly low. Not because Iraqi terrorists take the day off to go and vote, but because...
View ArticleThe Union is a force for good. Stop the bean-counting and make the moral case
One of the most grating developments in politics over the past decade has been the usurping of morality by evidence. Everything must be “evidence-based” these days. From drugs policy to educational...
View ArticleNarendra Modi must offer more than hope – ask Barack Obama
For a politician who was treated as a pariah as recently as 2005 and denied a visa to enter the US, this hasn't been a bad few days for Narendra Modi, the Hindu-nationalist who was elected India's...
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