Leading Articles

Recent Leading Articles

Leading Article: The real economy takes a hit

Saturday, 4 October 2008

It has become depressingly clear this week that the global credit crunch is now percolating through to the real economy. Yesterday it was announced that Britain's services sector, which represents about 75 per cent of the economy, shrank in September at its fastest rate since records began 12 years ago; businesses there have been cutting jobs for the past five months, with hotels and restaurants among those hardest hit. Manufacturing has also contracted strongly, with new orders and output at their lowest since the early 1990s.

A commissioner who tried to be politician and policeman

Friday, 3 October 2008

Leading article: Sir Ian Blair's time ran out when the Conservatives took power in London

Leading article: Death with dignity

Friday, 3 October 2008

The dilemma Debbie Purdy faces is about as agonising as can be imagined. She has a terminal illness and is anxious to be in a position to decide when and if to end her own life, should her condition become unbearable. But she is also desperate to protect her husband, a Cuban musician, Omar Puente, from the threat of prosecution if he were to assist her. She wants the option of travelling to the Swiss clinic, Dignitas, in Zurich, where terminally ill patients are helped to a quick and painless death.

Leading article: Golden age

Friday, 3 October 2008

Maybe you thought all that had gone out with the credit crunch; that the Damien Hirst sale set the seal on the age of excess and a return to the spare lines of Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore was just around the gallery corner. If so, you would be wrong.

Leading article: A new Conservative Party lays claim to government

Thursday, 2 October 2008

Mr Cameron sets out his stall, not just to his party, but to the country

Leading article: A 42-day warning we should heed

Thursday, 2 October 2008

One of the first pieces of business that will go before the House of Lords after they return from their summer break will be legislation that would allow terrorist suspects to be held for questioning without charge for up to 42 days. Even the Government's business managers accept that this measure is going to be thrown out by their lordships – but sadly that will not be the end of it. With its large majority in the House of Commons, the Government will no doubt override the Lords and bring the measure back.

Leading article: Girls' night in

Thursday, 2 October 2008

If Bridget Jones (born, we are proud to say, on the pages of this newspaper) became the symbol of a generation of women counting calories, cigarettes and the remaining minutes on her body clock, it was her coiffed cousins across the Atlantic who seriously sexed up the image of the female singleton. When Sex and the City exploded on to our TV screens, hundreds of thousands of women (and some men) became hooked on the Manolo-Blahniked Manhattanites searching for the perfect man and lamenting, over cup cakes or cosmopolitans, the fact that perfection was a commodity more easily found in shoes.

Leading Article: Congress must act, but with more deliberation

Wednesday, 1 October 2008

The US public has spoken and their representatives must listen

Leading Article: Elite should not be a dirty word

Wednesday, 1 October 2008

The Chancellor of Oxford University, Lord Patten, laid it on the line yesterday, warning that the university would not be able to meet government targets for admissions from state schools unless the gap in performance between the state and private sectors narrowed. Universities should not be treated as social security offices, he said, to widen participation of disadvantaged groups.

Leading Article: Gurkhas - a moral duty

Wednesday, 1 October 2008

It is always good to see justice done. But in the case of the retired Gurkhas who have now won the right to settle in Britain, it had a bitter tinge.

Leading article: A new airport on the Thames may be the answer for London

Tuesday, 30 September 2008

Those who have been following the evolution of Conservative Party policy under David Cameron might have sensed the way the wind was blowing, but yesterday's announcement still came as a surprise. Addressing the party conference in Birmingham , the shadow Transport Secretary, Theresa Villiers, pledged that a Conservative government would tear up plans for a third runway at Heathrow airport and use the money to build a high-speed, north-south rail line instead.

Leading article: Echoes of a dark past

Tuesday, 30 September 2008

Alarm bells will ring across Europe at the news that Austria's two far-right parties have made big gains in the country's general election. Between them they have secured almost a third of the seats in parliament, less than one percentage point behind the biggest party, the Social Democrats. It is the best result for the far right in Austria since the Second World War. Austrian politics are now in turmoil.

Leading article: The business of fashion

Tuesday, 30 September 2008

Each year, as the fashion shows reach their climax and their finale in Paris, we hear the cry of how good the British designers were, how fertile their ideas, how exciting their young talent. Absolutely right. Thanks partly to the art colleges and partly to the multicultural flowering of the country, Britain is peculiarly fecund in its design imagination. John Galliano showed for Dior yesterday; Vivienne Westwood follows after.

Leading article: The economy changes the calculations for Mr Cameron

Monday, 29 September 2008

Until very recently, this year's Conservative Party conference looked as though it would be an exultant dress rehearsal for government. David Cameron and his party were riding high in the polls; a swingeing victory at the next election seemed inevitable, however much worldly-wise Tories tried to play that prospect down. The more crushed and care-worn a figure Gordon Brown cut, the less encumbered seemed Mr Cameron's passage to Number 10.

Leading article: A space race rises in the east

Monday, 29 September 2008

For those of us in the Western hemisphere, and perhaps not only here, there was a distinctly retro feel to China's latest venture into space. The blast-off, the space walk – complete with small red Chinese flag – and yesterday's textbook landing in the Inner Mongolian desert were all set pieces familiar from the US and Soviet exploits of yesteryear. Should anyone really be worried about a Chinese space programme that is clearly at such an early stage?

Leading article: Cameron still has much to do

Sunday, 28 September 2008

Here is the deal and why it is still not sealed. David Cameron has shown himself to be a highly proficient politician who has learned a great deal from Tony Blair about how to win against a tired, long-serving government. He is personable, clever and has done a good marketing job of changing perceptions of the Conservative brand.

Britain too is in the centre of this storm

Saturday, 27 September 2008

Leading Article: The haggling is going on in Washington over the future of the American financial system, but be in no doubt: our fates are entwined.

Leading article: A sensible drugs policy

Saturday, 27 September 2008

Another rancorous row about the classification of illegal drugs is looming. The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs met yesterday in London to discuss whether ecstasy should be downgraded from Class A to Class B. Experts will present evidence to the organisation's panel and a report will be issued next year.

Leading article: When politics meets economics in Washington

Friday, 26 September 2008

The Paulson bailout will be improved by closer Congressional scrutiny

An assault on our freedom

Friday, 26 September 2008

Leading article: The Government has unveiled a small piece of plastic that is a big threat to our liberties.

Leading article: Ominous signs that this crisis is far from over

Thursday, 25 September 2008

Our governments still have much to do to rescue our economies

Leading article: Words are not enough

Thursday, 25 September 2008

When times get tough, it is the poor who suffer most. Thus it is in national economies, and thus it threatens to be on a global scale, as a lethal combination of higher food and oil prices, economic slowdown in the industrial nations, and now a world financial crisis bear down on the neediest countries, least equipped to cope.

Leading article: Precious stone

Thursday, 25 September 2008

The idea of the island is especially resonant in this part of the world. Like Shakespeare's John of Gaunt, we tend to feel our spirits moved by the thought of precious stones set in silver seas and fortresses built by nature for herself.

Leading article: The Prime Minister gains some breathing space

Wednesday, 24 September 2008

A competent speech may have silenced doubters, but problems remain

Leading article: Credit munch hits France

Wednesday, 24 September 2008

Heaven forefend, French waiters are being rude to customers. Not just hapless tourists who dare to order in faltering French, but natives with the temerity to insist that they do not want an aperitif before their meal. Even worse, some diners are being asked to leave a restaurant if they decline a starter and ask to go straight to the main course. French diners are quite literally tightening their belts as the economic downturn bites, and some restaurateurs, in indignation, are biting the hands they should be feeding.