Lessons to be learned in the art of the middle ground
Fraternal links between UK Labour and Australian Labor may be long and deep but both are walking a fine political line, writes Geoff Kitney. No-one is quite sure why the great fraternal parties…
Politics
Political manoeuvres
The right-wing agenda backed by Rupert Murdoch’s media machine in Australia is changing the face of public discourse, writes Geoff Kitney. Australia recently marked the birthday of one of its most extraordinary…
A sea change in the UK is on the political horizon
Murray Ritchie poses the question: Is the age of Tory England and SNP Scotland finally slipping away? In Scotland the Scottish National Party suspected they were in for a drubbing in the…
Battling for Australia’s hearts and minds
A referendum will take place next week on whether or not to give Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders a formal place in their Constitution, more than 200 years after Britain’s ‘First Fleet’…
Brexit: when rhetoric finally faced facts
Trade experts warned from the outset that Boris Johnson was putting his ambition ahead of the reality of Britain’s ability to negotiate deals, writes Geoff Kitney. When Boris Johnson set out to…
Only a mug makes predictions in Scottish politics
Labour exults in Nicola Sturgeon’s departure, likewise the Tories. Labour has moved into second place according to the polls, but is still a distant second, Murray Ritchie writes. It was all very…
Australia stopped the boats but the UK may flounder
The BBC may have reinstated sports pundit Gary Lineker, but the debate on the United Kingdom government’s tough new refugee policy will go on and on, writes Geoff Kitney. In today’s democracies,…
Rishi Sunak’s Tory nightmare
The United Kingdom is doing its best to show itself coming apart at the seams. Are things really so bad? They could well be, writes Murray Ritchie. Consider: inflation, the frightening cost…
It’s all Brexit’s fault!
With Liz Truss gone, Britain’s chaotic Conservative government is looking for its third prime minister this year and the sixth since Brexit, writes Murray Ritchie. Opposition parties scream for a general election…
Why is no-one talking about the high cost of Brexit?
Leaving the single market and customs union is believed to have reduced UK trade in goods to the EU by £14 billion a month, writes Murray Ritchie. While the United Kingdom slithers…