Leading Articles

Recent Leading Articles

Leading article: In the shadow of the White House

Monday, 3 November 2008

All eyes are on the US election this week, but closer to home, the by-election in Glenrothes will be important in a British context as a test of the Government's standing and of the strength of the "Brown bounce".

Leading article: Hamilton the Great

Monday, 3 November 2008

While it was a grim weekend for English team sport, with both cricketers and rugby league players experiencing traumatic defeat, two supreme individuals came to the fore. We salute Paula Radcliffe for claiming her third New York marathon, but even she will surely acknowledge that Lewis Hamilton's achievement in winning his first Formula One drivers' championship was of a different order altogether.

Leading article: Obama: living the dream

Sunday, 2 November 2008

By now, nearly one in three of those American voters likely to vote will have done so. Among them, Barack Obama has a substantial double-digit lead. Unless something is very wrong with the US opinion-polling industry, Senator Obama is more certain to be the President-elect on Wednesday morning than any candidate since George Bush's father beat Michael Dukakis in 1988.

Leading Article: The Obama promise of hope and change

Saturday, 1 November 2008

But European excitement must be tempered by hard-headed realism

Leading Article: Sporting life

Saturday, 1 November 2008

Motor racing fans have a treat in store this weekend. Lewis Hamilton goes into the Formula One season's final race in Brazil tomorrow in the same position as last year: on the cusp of victory, but plagued by nagging doubts that he could miss out. The young driver from Stevenage needs only to finish fifth to become Formula One's youngest ever champion.

Leading article: What a hypocritical way to run Britain's railways

Friday, 31 October 2008

The Government is still failing to invest on the necessary scale

Leading article: Another bad day at the BBC

Friday, 31 October 2008

The Russell Brand affair has claimed its second scalp. After a long and, by all accounts, tense meeting of the BBC Trust, it was announced that the controller of BBC Radio 2, Lesley Douglas, had resigned. Mr Brand himself had resigned 24 hours before, apologising for the crude and obscene messages he and his guest, Jonathan Ross, had left for their planned interviewee, Andrew Sachs, all those days before. Mr Ross has been suspended for 12 weeks – as the BBC emphasised – without pay.

Leading article: Long life

Friday, 31 October 2008

It is not often, in these days of early dusk and gathering recession, that good news comes along.

Leading article: The nemesis of the hedge funds – and a lesson to us all

Thursday, 30 October 2008

We urgently need to regulate the shadow banking sector

Leading article: Ominous echoes of genocide

Thursday, 30 October 2008

We have been here before. There is a disturbing d�jà vu to the reports of thousands of refugees on the move with their mattresses and cooking pots in the border area between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Leading article: Brand values

Thursday, 30 October 2008

Nothing demonstrates contrition as emphatically as a resignation. So we should give credit to the comedian Russell Brand for bringing his relationship with the BBC to a sudden end yesterday.

Leading article: The real questions that the BBC needs to answer

Wednesday, 29 October 2008

The Russell Brand affair is a diversion that exposes woeful leadership

Leading article: Hungary is the next test for the EU

Wednesday, 29 October 2008

The international financial whirlpool has sucked in its first member of the European family. Earlier this month, foreign investors began to dump Hungarian assets on a huge scale. This sudden withdrawal of capital had a disastrous effect. The value of the Hungarian forint plunged on international exchanges and the market for government bonds dried up.

Leading article: Courageous choice

Wednesday, 29 October 2008

Anyone who watched Tony Adams play for either Arsenal or England will know what a lion he was on the football pitch. But his courage away from the field was equally as impressive.

Leading article: Mr Brown should beware of sounding too triumphant

Tuesday, 28 October 2008

Another nail was hammered into the coffin of the Government's vaunted public finance rules yesterday. Gordon Brown, before an audience of business leaders, argued that the "responsible" course for the Government as Britain enters recession is to shed the restrictions that have, until now, limited public borrowing.

Leading article: A risky and provocative raid

Tuesday, 28 October 2008

In international relations, silence can be as eloquent as any official statement. And the silence from the United States after Sunday's attack on a house in eastern Syria, just across the border with Iraq, told its own story.

Leading article: Bad manners

Tuesday, 28 October 2008

There are some episodes that cast modern Britain in a very shabby light. Take two recent examples. Earlier this month, two DJs, both employed by the BBC, rang up an elderly actor and left offensive messages on his answering machine, supposedly for the purpose of amusing their listeners. We have also learned of a nurse who took a patient's blood pressure while casually chatting on her mobile phone.

Leading article: A prison scandal that should shame us all

Monday, 27 October 2008

The Government's disclosure, in answer to a question tabled by the Liberal Democrats, that an average of 1.7 babies are born each week to women in prison, has a melancholy and Dickensian ring to it. True, the prisons into which these women are serving sentences are not necessarily grim Victorian fortresses, but it is a dismal comment on the state of our society that we even tolerate the idea of so many children spending their first months of life behind bars.

Leading article: A missed opportunity for Israel

Monday, 27 October 2008

For much of the past year, the state of Israel, while marking 60 years of its existence, has been in a state of stasis. Mired in allegations of corruption, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has let matters drift, with depressing consequences for the comatose peace process with the Palestinians.

Leading article: Jam and the new Jerusalem

Monday, 27 October 2008

After the nude calendar and the video designed to help the elderly spice up their sex lives, the Women's Institute is fast losing its capacity to shock.

Leading article: Greek tragedy or Whitehall farce?

Sunday, 26 October 2008

The Greek islands form a suitable setting for a drama that might have been plotted by the gods. The story conforms to the three unities of classical theatre: time, place and mood. The cast is small. The action takes place on yachts, villas and tavernas in two similar locations over a few days in the summer, and the mood is one of hubris.

Leading Article: We need to cushion the impact of this recession

Saturday, 25 October 2008

Interest rate cuts are risky, but justified in the present climate

Leading Article: The true price of a free gift

Saturday, 25 October 2008

When journalists welcomed the return of Peter Mandelson because it would make British politics more interesting, we had no idea quite how quickly and how richly this prediction would be fulfilled. Nor, frankly, did we have an inkling that the party that would suffer most from the return of "interesting" times, in the sense of the word used in the Chinese curse, would be the Conservative Party.

Leading Article: A silver lining

Saturday, 25 October 2008

Our economy is shrinking. The pound is on the slide. Property prices are plummeting and share certificates are fast becoming fit only for lining drawers.