Leading Articles

Recent Leading Articles

Leading article: The pain and peril of assisted suicide

Thursday, 11 December 2008

A lot of nonsense has been written about last night's film on the Sky Real Lives channel showing the death of Craig Ewert in a Zurich clinic. It has been described, among other things, as using death as a form of cheap reality television-style entertainment.

Leading article: Small print

Thursday, 11 December 2008

The way the Government's plans for benefits reform were initially presented seemed designed to spread fear throughout the land. The emphasis was all on mothers with one-year-olds being made to work, benefits being docked and draconian sanctions against those who "played the system". The spectre of Karen Matthews, her workless life and many children, was never mentioned, but always present.

Leading article: Mr Cameron, and the search for economic credibility

Wednesday, 10 December 2008

Gordon Brown deserves flak – but the Tories must set out an alternative

Leading article: The EU's new test in the Balkans

Wednesday, 10 December 2008

The European Union has begun, after much delay, its mission to strengthen law and order in Kosovo. Some 2,000 civilian officials have started taking over police, court and customs duties from the United Nations. Early reports say that the initial stages of the handover went without a hitch. The whole process is due to take several months.

Leading article: Under the counter

Wednesday, 10 December 2008

At a time when so much genuinely urgent business is at hand – today's Welfare Reform White Paper, for a start – it is hard to understand why the Government is pressing ahead with legislation to ban the open display of tobacco in shops. Is it at all likely that this will have an effect in any way proportionate to the inconvenience it causes to small shopkeepers? Far more important, how many would-be smokers will it actually deter?

Leading article: India must be careful not to play into the terrorists' hands

Tuesday, 9 December 2008

If President-elect Barack Obama is showing signs of being sucked in, against his will, to opine on domestic economic matters before his 20 January investiture, he should thank his lucky stars that he has not yet been called upon to pronounce on the growing tensions between Pakistan and India. Instead it has been thrust upon the figure of the departing Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, and the Republican candidate, John McCain, to shuttle between New Delhi and Islamabad in a desperate effort to keep a war of words from breaking out into an actual clash of arms over the terrorist assault on Mumbai.

Leading article: Let schools decide how to teach

Tuesday, 9 December 2008

Sir Jim Rose's review of primary school teaching, commissioned by the Government, has been touted as a blueprint for the most radical reform of education in two decades. The interim report certainly contains suggestions that will have traditionalists spluttering with indignation.

Leading article: A dog's life

Tuesday, 9 December 2008

There is, it seems, some scientific basis to the old idea that dog and man are kindred spirits. Researchers from the University of Vienna have discovered that, like us primates, canines feel jealousy. When a dog was denied a tasty treat after performing some service and that treat was conferred on another canine that had done none of the work, the first dog was rather miffed. And well might it be. There is surely enough injustice in this world, without introducing more in the name of scientific research.

Leading article: Debate must be about more than the Speaker

Monday, 8 December 2008

Since the nine-hour arrest of Damian Green and the police searches of his premises, the political fallout has come in distinct stages and moved at what has sometimes seemed a glacial pace. Over the past week, the Metropolitan Police, the Speaker of the Commons and the Home Secretary have all produced separate chronologies and justifications for what happened. They boiled down to variations on "not me, Guv", and "we were only following orders".

Leading article: Not just charity, but justice too

Monday, 8 December 2008

There is a proverb which is often glibly trotted out when people come to talk about poverty: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to fish and you feed him for life." The problem is that this suggests that addressing global poverty is essentially a technical matter. In part that is true; but poverty is also a political issue. The solutions require justice not charity, and in the modern world, that means understanding the reality of how political power is exercised.

Leading article: Faith and reason

Monday, 8 December 2008

The Independent is a secular newspaper. And taking a secular view of the world does not mean being intolerant of those with religious faith. Religion still has a role in British society, and it is important not only that it should be understood, but that the different faiths and their adherents should be respected.

Leading article: Decline of the real man is no joke

Sunday, 7 December 2008

According to our report of the threat to the more testosterone-charged of the species, some of us may live to see the last of the real men.

Leading article: So, what about the families that are not hard-working?

Saturday, 6 December 2008

The Karen Matthews case exposes contradictions in the benefits system

Leading article: The wrong priorities

Saturday, 6 December 2008

There was an unexpected treat from Gordon Brown for middle-class voters in the debate following Wednesday's Queen's Speech: state help to stem the rising tide of home repossessions. The Prime Minister announced a taxpayer-backed scheme to allow homeowners made redundant to defer payment of some of their mortgage interest payments for two years. Yet as is so often the case with Mr Brown's surprise announcements, the plan is unravelling under scrutiny.

Leading article: A welcome reverse

Saturday, 6 December 2008

With a stroke of his pen, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has marked the end of the bendy bus's reign of terror on the capital's roads. These great vehicular millipedes are being phased out.

Leading article: A victory for civil liberties – but the larger war still rages

Friday, 5 December 2008

The police DNA databse is just one of the assaults on our freedom

Leading article: Do not forget the plight of savers

Friday, 5 December 2008

As the tediously moralising Polonius had it in Hamlet,"neither a borrower or a lender be". It is a course that the Government and financial authorities seem determined to promote in the first case and thwart in the second.

Leading article: Sent off

Friday, 5 December 2008

They are a football team who have suffered five defeats in the past six games and presently languish in the relegation zone of the Premier League. Managers have been kicked out by club boards for less – much less. But when the chairman of Sunderland Football Club, Niall Quinn, said yesterday that he tried his best to persuade Roy Keane to stay on, it is very hard not to believe him.

Leading Article: The Government's agenda has taken a buffeting, too

Thursday, 4 December 2008

The Queen's Speech could not escape the shadow of economic crisis

Leading Article: Statistical improbability

Thursday, 4 December 2008

On the face of it, the figures published by The Lancet yesterday, suggesting that one in 10 children are victims of "maltreatment", are shocking. If true, they imply that, each year, one million children in Britain are being beaten, burned, punched, hit with implements or subjected to sexual abuse ranging from being shown pornographic material to penetrative intercourse.

Leading Article: Not so tongue-tied after all

Thursday, 4 December 2008

It is refreshing today to be able to report some good news about language provision in state secondary schools after seven lean years. The decline in the take-up of languages has been halted and schools are offering pupils a much broader range of options.

Leading article: Now is the time to tackle the abuses of our welfare system

Wednesday, 3 December 2008

The present recession provides no excuse for delaying reform

Leading article: A military challenge to Mr Mugabe

Wednesday, 3 December 2008

Is the alliance of forces that has kept Robert Mugabe in power finally starting to crack? For more than a decade now Zimbabweans have watched their once-prosperous country slide into penury and decay. Their government's mismanagement has brought hunger, disease, plunging life-expectancy, joblessness and hyperinflation to a land that was at one time the breadbasket of Africa. As the months and years have passed, and Mr Mugabe secured his power by fair means or foul, one could only marvel at people's forbearance. Every forecast that Zimbabwe could survive not a moment longer was disproved, as people somehow found a way.

Leading article: Bear necessities

Wednesday, 3 December 2008

Not even bears benefit from the bear market, it seems. When Knut the polar bear cub celebrates his second birthday at Berlin Zoo on Friday, this could be almost the last time he meets his adoring public on what was taken for granted as his home territory. Not only does the growing animal need a larger enclosure than the zoo can provide – where did those millions of euros he brought in from extra visitor fees go? – but a contract is out on his future.