Yesterday’s Iraq war memorial service can’t have been much fun for Tony Blair. Not only did he get called a war criminal by the father of a soldier who was killed in the conflict, he also had to sit quietly through the Rowan Williams’ polite denouncing of those who ‘look for short cuts in the [...]
Last week, I reported on the case of Dana Ali, an Iraqi immigrant being held in Oakington detention centre because of an apparent Home Office mix-up in his paperwork. Tonight, Dana has been released and has been allowed to return home while his case is considered. He has not yet been granted leave to remain [...]
Iraqi immigrant, Dana Ali, faces deportation after an alleged Home Office blunder fails to recognise his marriage to a British citizen. Dana Ali was born in 1975. He grew up in Halabja, the Kurdish town in northern Iraq that the world first heard about on March 16th 1988 when 5,000 people were massacred by Saddam [...]
You’d be forgiven for thinking Iraq is a peaceful place. It rarely occupies the British media these days. Only a couple of years ago, whilst Afghanistan was taking a back seat, barely a day went by without headlines of dozens killed by suicide bombs. These days, suicide is painless. On the same day that every [...]
To many of my generation, who were born in Thatcher’s Britain and whose politics were shaped by the stark reminder one morning in September 2001 that history was far from over, Tony Benn is a hero. It was another left-wing icon, Bob Dylan, who described a hero as “someone who understands the degree of responsibility [...]
After one of the costliest weeks for British forces in Afghanistan, Gordon Brown argued today that the ongoing campaign is a “patriotic duty” to keep the streets of Britain safe. “It comes back to terrorism on the streets of Britain,” he said. “If we were to allow the Taliban to be back in power in [...]
There’s a bit in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan where the eponymous character starts paraphrasing Moby Dick. “I’ll chase him round the moons of Nibia and round the Antares Maelstrom and round Perdition’s flames before I give him up!” he cries. Tracking down comedian Mark Steel can be a bit like that. Between [...]
Friends, lefty bloggers, socialists, I’ve got a guilty secret. I’ve been actively campaigning for the Green Party in the upcoming European Elections on June 4th. It’s been a difficult time for me politically. With the split in Respect, the failure of John McDonnell and the Labour left to leave a scratch on the New Labour [...]
It is an absolute travesty of justice that the man who was almost single-handedly responsible for a war that has claimed the lives of as many as a million Iraqis can look forward to a healthy presidential pension, while a man who did nothing more than throw his shoes at this person will be rotting [...]
