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SubscriptionsAuthor: Hardeep Matharu
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Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor: How Power Protects Itself Through Contempt
As the eighth in line of succession to the British throne is arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office, Hardeep Matharu explores how elite impunity is built on creating a sense of powerlessness in the many – in her editorial first published in the latest monthly print edition of Byline Times
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Shami Chakrabarti: ‘We Need a Popular Front Broad Enough to Go From the Left of the Left to Liberal Conservatives’
The Labour peer, lawyer and human rights activist speaks to Byline Times’ Editor-in-Chief Hardeep Matharu about why her new podcast – Shami’s Speakeasy – focuses on having human conversations with those of shared values but differing politics, and an edge of resistance
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Andy Burnham: These Dangerous, Alienating Times Call for Radical Change of Our Politics
From imposter syndrome and proportional representation, to fixing the fundamentals and the ‘incestuous’ Westminster media-political class – Labour’s Greater Manchester Mayor believes the right can be defeated at the ballot box if bold changes to connect with the public and their day-to-day lives are made now
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The Cost of Lies: Why We Identify With Deadly Misinformation
From Covid to climate change, understanding the role unevidenced conspiracy theories fulfil for individual and social identity in a shifting world can better help explain our ‘post-truth’ age
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How Our Politicians Created an ‘Island of Strangers’ So They Don’t Have to Make Our Lives Any Better
By presenting tougher immigration as a solution to people’s discontent, Keir Starmer and others sidestep the real reasons why people feel estranged in their lives – it’s a cynical and simplistic political ruse that keeps everyone alienated, writes Hardeep Matharu
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Populist Simplicity in a Hyper-Complex World: Will Trump Overplay His Hand?
Hardeep Matharu dissects what the now infamous Oval Office meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky revealed about the American President’s approach – and speaks to political scientist Brian Klaas about why his ‘alternative realities’ don’t stack up against real-world complexities
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Complexity Is Reality – But There’s No Possibility For It In Today’s Political Culture
One of the biggest triumphs of the modern political right has been to close the space in which nuance and ambiguity can even sit, writes Hardeep Matharu
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Trump’s Return: Keeping the Subtle Flame of Integrity Lit
By paying attention to our complex and often contradictory humanness, we can keep our integrity through chaos and disruption
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The Cosy and Comfortable Liberal-Democratic Political-Media Class and the Darkness Ahead
Who will – truly – hold the line with the prospect of a more extreme politics coming to Britain via the ballot box?
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Trump’s Return and the Farage Blindspot: Dismissing What We Disagree With in the Hope It Will Disappear Isn’t the Answer – Reality Proves Otherwise
Not taking seriously political figures we find undesirable will not change their potential impact or ambitions – Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, and Nigel Farage only benefit from being underestimated, writes Hardeep Matharu
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The Psycho-Social-Techno Politics of ‘MAGA’ Trumps Democracy – And the Liberal Left Has No Answer
Donald Trump’s second victory in the United States is a warning sign to democracies everywhere of the centrality of emotions – and their manipulation – in the new politics of gross inequality and psychic rebellion fuelled by tech-driven alternative realities, writes Hardeep Matharu
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The Politics of Farage and Reform is No Joke of a Matter – The Established Media Must Learn Its Lessons and Start Holding Them to Account
The normalisation of racism and dog-whistles will only get worse if the press continues to treat Farage as an entertaining figure representing the ‘real views’ of the British people – it must stop, writes Byline Times’ Editor
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The Curtain Comes Down on the Conservatives’ Theatre of Cruelty
Hardeep Matharu, Editor of Byline Times, explores why the June 2024 print edition focuses on how ‘cruelty is the point’, to a point – and what the left must understand about the role of emotion in politics today
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Special Report: Our Society’s ‘Non-Human’ Population – A National Scandal Ignored
Hardeep Matharu, Editor of Byline Times, explains why the May 2024 print edition focuses on the denial of human rights and basic care to people with learning disabilities
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Special Investigation: The Far-Right Grooming of Survivors of Child Sexual Exploitation
Hardeep Matharu, Editor of Byline Times, explains why the cover story of the May 2024 print edition is one which must urgently be told
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‘Rishi Sunak is “Living Proof” a Prime Minister of Colour is No Evidence of a Britain Beyond Racism’
By refusing to condemn Lee Anderson’s comments about Sadiq Khan as Islamophobic, the Prime Minister exposed the cynical fallacy at the heart of ‘the most diverse Cabinet in history’
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‘The Normalisation of Politically Expedient Racism: Rishi Sunak Cannot Call Out Something He Has Been Complicit In’
Lee Anderson’s claims that the Muslim Mayor of London has handed the city to Islamists is another unsurprising example of the political culture the Conservative Party has normalised, writes Hardeep Matharu
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‘A Disunited Kingdom? For Younger Minorities, Britishness is an Identity We Can Work With – A Quest for Englishness Must Confront This’
Developing a stronger sense of Englishness cannot merely be looked at through a political lens – our identities are personal and multiple, conflicting and shifting, writes Hardeep Matharu
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Exploding ‘Megxit’: Our Royalty and Press Paint a Distorted Portrait of Britain
In its first retail print edition available in shops, Byline Times reveals what the story of Prince Harry and Meghan’s departure from the Royal Family raises about power and identity, monarchy and modernity in Britain today
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Byline Times’ Wootton Allegations ‘Unfounded’, BBC Producer Tells MP John Nicolson
In an exchange on BBC Radio 4’s ‘PM’ programme, the MP was shut down by Evan Davis when he mentioned this newspaper’s special investigation into the now suspended GB News presenter Dan Wootton
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The Media Scandal the Media Didn’t Want to Touch: Byline Times Will Keep Exposing the ‘Dark Forces’ in the Shadows
This newspaper will continue its special investigation into TV presenter Dan Wootton and expose wrongdoing in the established media – without fear or favour
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Prince Harry Takes a Stand for Us All: ‘If They’re Supposedly Policing Society, Who On Earth is Policing Them?’
The crisis and corruption in the British press is one of the biggest, ongoing scandals of our time. Byline Times tips its hat to Prince Harry
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The Identity Trap: No One Narrative Can Encompass the Different Dimensions of Diversity
As Britain welcomes its first Asian Prime Minister, Hardeep Matharu explores how our pluralistic society is reflected in the multiplicity of its migrant experience – as demonstrated by the different reactions to Rishi Sunak’s rise
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Exposing the Conservative Hedge Fund Scandal: Better Late than Never – Or Too Little Too Late?
As Kwasi Kwarteng faces questions over his attendance at a cocktail party with financiers, Byline Times’ Editor Hardeep Matharu asks why this newspaper’s warnings from three years ago about the influence of hedge fund donors in politics were ignored
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‘Out of the Picture: After the Queen’s Death, Will Britain Finally Confront Itself?’
Britain has hidden a key part of our story from ourselves. With the Queen’s death marking a decisive shift, it’s time for us all to start building a better picture of our country and its past, writes Hardeep Matharu
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The Identity Trap: Race, Representation and the Rise of Conservative Diversity
Rishi Sunak is in the running to be Britain’s first prime minister of colour – but the debate around whether this will be a good thing for ethnic minorities has laid bare conflicting ideas about the ‘individual’ and the ‘collective’, writes Hardeep Matharu
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‘Carriegate’: How the Prime Minister and his Hacks Scratch Each Others’ Backs
The mystery of a disappearing story about Boris Johnson’s wife once again confirms the merger between the political and media classes distorting British democracy, says Hardeep Matharu
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The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee: An Unprecedented Reign – But What Next for 21st Century Britain?
The Queen’s 70 years on the throne have seen Britain undergo extraordinary change – how will the monarchy’s constitutional and societal role continue to evolve in the years ahead?
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Backwards Britain: Having Rejected a European Future, We Can Only Hark Back to an Imperial Past
Hardeep Matharu explores how the Russian invasion of Ukraine has exposed the UK’s perilous retreat – at a time when collaboration and a new vision of itself is required to navigate the dangerous realities of a changing world
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‘A Deeply Dangerous Power Grab by the Home Secretary’: Conservative Peer Calls for Plans to Strip Citizenship Without Warning to be Scrapped
Baroness Sayeeda Warsi told peers that immigrants’ fears that future generations would be treated like outsiders and second-class citizens are not unfounded
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‘If Someone Told Me to Go Back and Live In Romania, I Would Really Struggle’
Hardeep Matharu speaks to Romanian-born Labour county councillor Dr Alex Bulat about damaging political narratives around migration, the insidious nature of British prejudice and why she has always felt more at home in the UK
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‘A Populist Demagogue’ – Johnson’s Government ‘Most Extreme I’ve Seen’, says Former Tory Attorney General
Dominic Grieve told Byline TV that the Government’s disregard for the rule of law, its xenophobic rhetoric over migrants and its cronyism show why the Conservative Party’s problems go beyond one leader
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‘Terrifying’ – Johnson’s Government ‘Following Far-Right Playbook’ on Crushing Dissent
Labour peer and former Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti told Byline Times that new amendments to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill are designed to frame people peacefully demonstrating as terrorists
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‘History Will Judge this Shabby Government’ and its Weaponisation of Refugee Lives, Says Lord Alf Dubs
The Labour peer – who fled the Nazis and came to Britain as a child refugee in 1939 – told Byline Times that Priti Patel’s plans “to penalise people for the way they reach safety is absolutely unheard of in the history of refugees”
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Even as the World Burns, Johnson has to Play his Anti-Immigrant Fiddle
The Prime Minister activated his base in the one way he really knows how, when he claimed that the fall of the Roman Empire has great lessons for today’s climate emergency, says Hardeep Matharu
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‘Us and Them’ Politics Puts Us All in Danger
The more we are wound up through a divisive politics of polarisation, the less safe we all ultimately are, says Hardeep Matharu
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‘Deserving’ or ‘Undeserving’ Refugees? Johnson and Patel’s Afghanistan Problem
With a key pillar of the Government’s ‘culture war’ protecting our island nation from unpalatable ‘others’, Hardeep Matharu explores the crass and complex classifications at the heart of the Government’s neocolonial immigration policy
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‘Good Chaps’ Left the Building a While Ago, Britain – It’s Time to Wake Up
Hardeep Matharu argues that Labour MP Dawn Butler’s removal from the House of Commons after calling Boris Johnson a ‘liar’ finally exposed the structural failings at the heart of the British state
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‘Met Police Response to its Institutional Corruption is a Form of Institutional Corruption’
The chair of the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel says the Metropolitan Police’s immediate denial of systemic issues of corruption in the force demonstrates the very problem its report into a 34-year-old unsolved murder highlighted
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The Daniel Morgan Report: From ‘Institutional Racism’ to ‘Institutional Corruption’: No ‘Hierarchy of Sickness’ in Met Police Failures, says Morgan Family
Institutional corruption is wide-ranging, says Alastair Morgan, after the independent panel report into his brother’s 1987 murder is finally published
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Is Priti Patel Intervening to Stop Report into Daniel Morgan Murder Finally Confirming Institutional Corruption in the Media and Police?
Eight years after it was established, the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel is finally ready to release its findings into the unsolved 1987 murder of the private detective. So why has the Home Secretary now delayed its publication to ‘review’ its contents?
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A Smokescreen for Tragedy: The Human Cost of Populism
The ultimate cost of corruption, incompetence, division and myth is always there, waiting to be brought home – as it has been for too many people in India and around the world during the Coronavirus pandemic, writes Hardeep Matharu
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David Cameron: Johnson’s Convenient Scapegoat
With his dual tactics of projection and deflection, the current Prime Minister has pulled off a masterstroke by launching an inquiry into the former Prime Minister’s conflicts of interest, says Hardeep Matharu
