Leading Articles

Leading article: Now the Egyptian military must hand power to the people

The euphoria on the streets of Cairo last night said almost everything that needed to be said about the end of President Hosni Mubarak's rule.

Recent Leading Articles

Leading article: The folly of allowing ideology to drive policy

Saturday, 12 February 2011

The government experienced two humiliating reversals yesterday.

Leading article: A mouse that roared

Saturday, 12 February 2011

Does David Cameron approve of Rastamouse, the Jamaican-patois-speaking, crime-fighting, rodent?

Leading article: The democratic world must stand with the Egyptian protesters

Friday, 11 February 2011

US and EU leaders should make it clear there will be no more support for repressive autocrats

Leading article: Prisoners' votes: no case for double punishment

Friday, 11 February 2011

Plenty of hot air was expended in the House of Commons yesterday over the "bunch of unelected judges in Strasbourg" who ruled it was illegal for the British Parliament to maintain its 140-year-old practice of depriving convicted criminals of the right to vote. Let's leave aside the question of whether judges are best elected, or even that of whether it would be sensible to secede from a European Court set up after the war at the behest of Winston Churchill, to ensure that human rights should never again be as at risk in Europe as they had been from Nazi Germany.

Leading article: A star is born

Friday, 11 February 2011

It's reasonable to suppose that theatre-goers who scrambled for first-night tickets for The Children's Hour, Lillian Hellman's classic 1934 play about two women accused of having a lesbian relationship, did so chiefly for the prospect of seeing live on stage two of the biggest screen stars of the moment, Keira Knightley and Elisabeth Moss.

Leading article: A victory for civil liberties – and a challenge for Labour

Thursday, 10 February 2011

Will the new leader, Ed Miliband, attempt to defend the indefensible?

Leading article: A message designed to be heard

Thursday, 10 February 2011

In its foreign policy so far, the Coalition has managed to spring some welcome surprises. One of these has been a more pragmatic approach to the European Union than might have been expected, given the Eurosceptic noises made by Tories during the election. Now we have William Hague, issuing a very deliberate and very public warning to Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, about avoiding "belligerent language" during the present regional ferment. Overt, or even implied, criticism of the Israeli leadership is not something one would associate with a Conservative foreign secretary, and the timing could be seen as little short of inflammatory.

Leading article: Public inconvenience

Thursday, 10 February 2011

When Manchester announced that it intended to achieve necessary spending cuts by closing, among other things, all but one of the city's public lavatories, it looked as though the city council was merely accelerating the lamentable trend observed in so many of Britain's towns and cities, where the public convenience is fast becoming extinct.

Leading article: A levy that looks like a white flag of surrender

Wednesday, 9 February 2011

Questions need to be asked about exactly how hard this Government has pushed for banking reform

Leading article: Lung cancer: the only way must be down

Wednesday, 9 February 2011

The sociology of death is always interesting. The news that the number of women dying from lung cancer has peaked in the UK is significant. Deaths from the same disease among men levelled off two decades ago. Why so?