In the latest of the interminable media “furores” about Jeremy Corbyn’s supposed unfitness to lead the Labour party – let alone become prime minister – it is easy to forget where we were shortly before he won the support of an overwhelming majority of Labour members to head the party. In the preceding two years, [...]

I really do not wish to write about Mark Field, the British government minister who assaulted a climate change activist this week, grabbing her by the neck and violently marching her out of a City of London dinner while all the hundreds of other wealthy diners watched either impassively or approvingly. But whatever my wishes, [...]

A few corporate media publications have finally come out in very half-hearted support of Julian Assange – after years of stabbing him in the back at every opportunity. These outlets, including the Guardian, Washington Post and New York Times, have found their voice very belatedly, only after the Trump administration revealed last week that it [...]

It is astonishing how often one still hears well-informed, otherwise reasonable people say about Julian Assange: “But he ran away from Swedish rape charges by hiding in Ecuador’s embassy in London.” That short sentence includes at least three factual errors. In fact, to repeat it, as so many people do, you would need to have [...]

By any reckoning, the claim made this week by al-Qaeda-linked fighters that they were targeted with chemical weapons by the Syrian government in Idlib province – their final holdout in Syria – should have been treated by the western media with a high degree of scepticism. That the US and other western governments enthusiastically picked [...]

I don’t write much directly about climate collapse, even though by any measure it is by far the most important issue any of us will face in our lifetimes. And I can gauge from my social media accounts that, when I do write about environmental issues, my followers – most of whom I assume share [...]

It is worth considering what “populism” represents outside the kneejerk scaremongering of the liberal media. Conditions are created for populism when there is widespread loss of faith in a society’s traditional organs of authority: the political class, the “mainstream” media and expert institutions. Those most exercised about populism, unsurprisingly, are the professional class in charge [...]

British comedian David Schneider has become one of the more influential public figures on social media seeking to arbitrate what constitutes anti-semitism. Compared to TV show host Rachel Riley, or even Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, Schneider is an exemplar of moderation and rationality. But, to be honest, the bar has been set pretty low in [...]

In my last blog post, I warned that the media and political class would continue with their long-running deceptions about Julian Assange now that he has been dragged from the Ecuadorean embassy. They have wasted no time in proving me right. The first thrust in their campaign of deceit was set out on the Guardian’s [...]

For seven years, from the moment Julian Assange first sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, they have been telling us we were wrong, that we were paranoid conspiracy theorists. We were told there was no real threat of Assange’s extradition to the United States, that it was all in our fevered imaginations. For [...]

It is time to stop believing these infantile narratives the British political and media establishments have crafted for us. Like the one in which they tell us they care deeply about the state of political life, and that they lie awake at night worrying about the threat posed by populism to our democratic institutions. How [...]

Has anyone else noticed how over the past few years the corporate media has been dedicating ever more space to articles on how to deal with loneliness, anxiety and insomnia, as well as ways to immerse ourselves in escapist new technology? Our attention is being diverted away from the political to the cultural, medical and [...]

Here are three important lessons for the progressive left to consider now that it is clear the inquiry by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russiagate is never going to uncover collusion between Donald Trump’s camp and the Kremlin in the 2016 presidential election. Painting the pig’s face 1. The left never had a dog in [...]

Owen Jones has made a short video discussing Labour’s crisis over anti-semitism. There are some good elements to it, not least the warning against conspiratorial thinking, and an admission, admittedly a fairly limited one, that the Labour leadership should not be accused of being anti-semitic (and implicitly that the party is not “institutionally anti-semitic”.) Sadly, [...]

What the left wants to talk about: How we change our societies to make them fairer, more transparent and more caring. How we tackle impending climate catastrophe through some kind of Green New Deal. How we conduct a truly ethical foreign policy that doesn’t give powerful western states the right to invade weaker states, or [...]

The moral panic generated by journalists and politicians over a supposed Labour ‘anti-semitism crisis’ is rooted in a perverse kind of reality – unconscious dread at the prospect of their inner narrative and worldview breaking apart John Harris, a columnist who by the Guardian’s current dismal standards is considered on the newspaper’s left, has added [...]