Leading Articles

Recent Leading Articles

Leading article: Strength and experience

Tuesday, 2 December 2008

As with the economic appointments last week, so with his foreign affairs and security appointments yesterday, President-elect Barack Obama has gone for a mix of weight, experience and an ability to work across the partisan divide. Mrs Clinton, the most high profile of the choices so far, touches all these buttons. She has authority, experience of the world at large and an ability shown as junior senator for New York to co-operate with opponents in the House.

Leading article: Credits where credit is due

Tuesday, 2 December 2008

This is a scandal. As if British society is not already under enough pressure from one "credit crunch", we are now facing another. To find it, don't reach for your bank statement, however, switch on your television, where it is now virtually impossible to identify who is responsible for making the programmes. Credits are shrunk to a fraction of their natural size in order to give space to advertising, or run past the top of our screens as an illegible lightening-fast blur.

Leading article: India and Pakistan have a common extremist enemy

Monday, 1 December 2008

The slaughter in Mumbai has finally come to an end. But the political inquest into the atrocity is only beginning. Hundreds of angry Mumbai residents took to the streets yesterday to protest at the failure of the Delhi government to keep them safe. The Indian media, meanwhile, is asking pointed questions about how prepared the authorities were for such an assault.

Leading article: Competent leadership badly needed

Monday, 1 December 2008

The scandal of the arrest of the Shadow immigration minister, Damian Green, continues to reverberate. Arresting MPs (not to mention raiding their offices in the House of Commons) is no small matter in a democracy. The affair must be treated with the highest seriousness by the Government. Before anything else we need an official statement detailing exactly what ministers knew before the raid went ahead. Otherwise, poisonous suspicions that the police have been used as a political tool will continue to fester.

Leading article: Bonfire of the Bills

Monday, 1 December 2008

It is hard to see silver linings in those recessionary clouds, but if you peer closely enough, you might just make some out. Take this week's Queen's speech. The Government needs to make room on the legislative agenda for emergency action to alleviate the banking crisis. One casualty is the Communications Data Bill, which provides for the creation of a giant database of information about our telephone calls, emails and internet searches. No one with any grasp of Britain's history of liberty will mourn that omission.

Leading article: We can give Zimbabwe hope

Sunday, 30 November 2008

The last that most people in this country knew of Zimbabwe was that a power-sharing deal had been done between Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader. Some of us might have been aware that the implementation of the deal had become a bit sticky, and we might have wondered what had become of Mr Tsvangirai in recent weeks.

Leading article: A nation in danger of drowning in a sea of debt

Saturday, 29 November 2008

This crisis is global in scope, but Britain is especially badly prepared

Leading article: Our freedoms under threat

Saturday, 29 November 2008

There is no law, no system, no set of regulations which can more effectively hold governments to account than the conscience of man. Opposition parties, the public and the press rely on individuals, not systems, to tell us what those who rule over us would like us not to know. We call them "whistleblowers" because, like referees, they seek to keep the players in our political system in check.

Leading article: A terrorist atrocity with tangled regional roots

Friday, 28 November 2008

The implications of the Mumbai massacre stretch beyond India

Leading article: Public pensions and private cost

Friday, 28 November 2008

The burden of public sector pension schemes is fast becoming too heavy to bear. Between 2001 and 2007, the Government's liability effectively doubled. Although 20 per cent of British workers are employed in the public sector, they receive 40 per cent of our pension entitlements. Much of that is unfunded and so paid directly by tax revenues.

Leading article: Bat bombshell

Friday, 28 November 2008

They picked a hell of a time to kill off a hero. Recession stalks the global economy. Woolworths has gone into administration. And Kilroy has just escaped from the jungle.

Leading article: Ministers should concentrate their fire on the banks

Thursday, 27 November 2008

The Government must act radically to unblock the credit markets

Leading article: Time for a royal intervention

Thursday, 27 November 2008

The capture of Bangkok's main international airport by the yellow-shirted members of the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) threatens to turn Thailand's recent political unrest into a full blown national crisis. The PAD has described the sit-in as a "final battle" in its quest to provoke a coup, remove the discredited Prime Minister, Somchai Wongsawat, and let the army take power. Yesterday, the head of the Thai army, General Anupong Paochina, called for both the PAD and the government to stand down and call an election. Unfortunately, instant recourse to the ballot box will offer no quick fix for this society, which is apparently torn by irreconcilable differences.

Leading article: Farewell, Woolies

Thursday, 27 November 2008

Now we know things are serious. Forget Lehman Brothers, Woolies has bitten the dust. If the gods of recession wanted a more profound demonstration of their power, they could not have chosen better than the news that the almost century-old retail chain is being put into administration. Of course, it is hard to say, hand on heart, that we didn't see it coming. Woolworths has been struggling for years – decades, in fact. The store might be everyone's fond childhood memory, but nostalgia does not fill the tills.

Leading article: The world must hope that America gets it right

Wednesday, 26 November 2008

We are all dependent on a recovery in the world's biggest economy

Leading article: A state of degradation

Wednesday, 26 November 2008

First the famine; now the disease. Zimbabweans are being subject to afflictions of a truly biblical ferocity. An outbreak of cholera, as we report today, is likely to have already killed thousands. New cases are appearing daily.

Leading article: Moral majority?

Wednesday, 26 November 2008

It's certainly an imaginative public private partnership. The Women's Minister, Harriet Harman, yesterday asked for the help of the Women's Institute to help root out sleazy adverts in local newspapers.

Leading article: A gamble that will decide Britain's political future

Tuesday, 25 November 2008

The pre-Budget report lays out the battleground for the next election

Leading article: Talking sense on immigration

Tuesday, 25 November 2008

The decision by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, to commission a study into the impact of an amnesty for illegal immigrants has not gone down well in Westminster. Mr Johnson's party leader, David Cameron, has refused to endorse the idea, and the Immigration minister, Phil Woolas, has described Mr Johnson as both "naive in the extreme" and a "nincompoop".

Leading article: Putting money in the pockets of the consumer makes sense

Monday, 24 November 2008

The Lib Dems are right to call for fairness in sharing the burden

Leading article: The folly of spurning the Dalai Lama

Monday, 24 November 2008

It is easy to call on the world's freedom movements to seek the path of negotiation over the way of violence. But what happens if it gets you nowhere? That was the bleak question asked by Tibetan exiles at a meeting in Dharmsala in India that ended at the weekend.

Leading article: A quick absolution

Monday, 24 November 2008

The Catholic Church, it used to be said, thinks not in decades but in centuries. No more. A mere 42 years after the Vatican castigated John Lennon for claiming the Beatles were more popular than Christ, that bellwether of papal thinking L' Osservatore Romano has overturned this condemnation, declaring Lennon's words to be the inconsequential boast of a "young working-class lad", while praising the Beatles' musical legacy.

Leading article: The cut that cures

Sunday, 23 November 2008

We report today that the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, is to cut Value Added Tax tomorrow in an attempt to stimulate the economy and to reduce the severity of the coming recession. If cutting tax is the right policy – a question to which we return in a moment – then VAT is the right tax to cut.

Leading article: The overwhelming case for a major economic package

Saturday, 22 November 2008

Tax cuts are needed but the banks must do their bit too

Leading article: The BBC still does not understand

Saturday, 22 November 2008

It is no surprise that the BBC Trust has acted quite so feebly in its report on the Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross prank. A general castigation but no specific punishment is what you might expect from an oversight board that has been set up to combine the contradictory tasks of defending the BBC to the outside world and acting as its policeman internally. But it is a response that fails on both counts. It will do nothing for the corporation's standing outside and nothing to shake up its management within.