Telling the history of migration is an important step in establishing safe routes for refugees
Last week, with the world’s attention focused on the climate talks in Glasgow, there was yet more tragedy, desperate danger and awful fear in the Channel. At least four refugees…
From Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia – it’s time to end Britain’s lethal arms peddling
Politics has its cycles, not just elections, but events that come around again and again. But that doesn’t make it repetitive. No event occurs twice in the same political environment,…
Book review: The Inside Out of Flies by Erica McAlister
When I was aged 10 or so, I was fascinated by lungfish. This pioneering group that built an evolutionary bridge between sea and land life, survived the extinction of the…
The Environment Bill needs to go much further
Amendments to Bills can be opaque, impenetrable things: “delete the word ‘may’ and replace with ‘must’” and such like. Even with the increasingly standard practice of including a sentence of…
There’s no perfect route to net-zero by 2030, but we still need to get there
The government likes to brandish its “legally binding” 2050 net-zero carbon emissions goal like a protective sword. See we’re “world-leading”, they cry, even while the independent Committee on Climate Change…
If the Tories cared about the rule of law, they’d overturn the dismantling of legal aid
The international affairs section of the Conservative Party's 2019 election manifesto talks of championing the rule of law. That’s not something talked about in the domestic sections, however, unsurprisingly perhaps…
Voting against Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal is vital to stop the UK becoming Singapore-upon-Thames
It might sound flippant to say the wholehearted backing given by European Research Group (ERG) Conservative MPs to Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal is reason enough to vote against it. But…
It’s time for the government to stop panicking and start planning
It has felt like a very, very long six months. But that’s how long it is since March, when the House of Lords, its older members absent, its atmosphere distinctly…
Our approach to science research funding needs an overhaul
An awful lot has happened in the past 12 months, but when the House of Lords today sat down on Wednesday to consider a report from August 2019 on the…
It’s time to rethink our cities so they work for people and the planet
For many years now, we’ve been hearing about “Smart Cities”, usually accompanied by vaguely sci-fi looking graphics of driverless car pods and total surveillance from sensors on every surface. But…