SubscriptionsSection: Argument
Honestly held opinions and provocative argument based on current events or our recent reports.
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‘It’s Trump, Not Ed Miliband Who Is the Source of the UK’s Transatlantic Problems’
The first job of the Foreign Secretary is to stand up for Britain’s interests, not to appease a President trying to undermine them, argues former British diplomat Alexandra Hall Hall
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The Business of War: Who Really Benefits From Britain’s Planned Military Spending Surge?
As the Government gears up for a military spending bonanza, Iain Overton asks whether Britain is really defending its territory, or simply the profits of the global defence industry
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Andy Burnham’s Cabinet Represents Starmerism Without Starmer
The new Prime Minister promised radical change, yet his picks for the Cabinet tell a very different story, argues Adam Bienkov
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‘There’s a Value in What We Produce Because We Feel – and an AI Chatbot Can’t Feel’
Hardeep Matharu meets Kate Devlin, Professor of AI & Society at King’s College London, to explore how relationships with AI companions aren’t particularly new, why she believes the under-16s social media ban is flawed, and why nothing can match human creativity
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Trump is Not America, and America is More Than Trump
Former British diplomat Alexandra Hall Hall found reassurance in the America she has always loved and recognised this Fourth of July – in the deep red of West Virginia
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Mandrake – Clubbing Together
When the country was in the grip of Brexit fever, and Theresa May was frantically trying to sever all ties with the European Union as soon as possible, Baroness Brenda Hale, then President of the UK Supreme Court, hardly endeared herself to the then Prime Minister when she and her fellow justices decreed that formal…
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Notes on Now – Canvassing in Makerfield
I went to Brussels for the 10th anniversary of Brexit. But before that I was in Makerfield to help get out the vote on polling day. I’m not a member of a political party. But I feared a far-right victory. And I wasn’t going to sit in the south lamenting something I might have helped…
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That’s True Too – Give Fossil Fuel Sponsorship the Red Card
I can’t pretend to be much of a football fan, but even I have been enthralled by the twists and turns of this year’s World Cup – the extraordinary emergence of underdogs like Cape Verde, the heroics of Curaçao against Ecuador, and the drama of Egypt versus Argentina.
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On the Record – Good Old English Narrowboat Days
Reform UK MP Lee Anderson* shares details of his summer escape to the canals of Nottinghamshire
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Peter Oborne’s Diary – Pol Roger and Islamophobia
The Spectator boasts that its summer party is the “most sought-after social ticket of the Westminster summer season, bringing together the most senior politicians, journalists, and political aides, alongside the crème de la crème of the arts and media world”.
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Letters – August 2026
Submit a letter for consideration about this month’s edition by emailing the Editors: Miss Hardeep Matharu and Mr Peter Jukes on letters@bylinetimes.com
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Andy Burnham Making Shabana Mahmood Chancellor Would Resurrect the Failed Politics of Morgan McSweeney
If the incoming Prime Minister does buckle to media and city pressure not to appoint Ed Miliband as Chancellor it will be an ominous sign of things to come, argues Adam Bienkov
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‘The BBC’s Ill-Conceived Cuts Sacrifice Journalists In Order To Save Managers’
The BBC is sacking journalists whilst leaving layers of largely superfluous and expensive management in place, argues former BBC reporter Patrick Howse
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A Hostile Foreign State Could ‘Buy A UK Election For Just £25m’
A former UK diplomat who spent a decade tracking Russian influence operations explains how open our politics is to foreign capture
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James Orr: Reform UK’s Religious Cambridge Professor’s Politics of Contradictions
Nigel Farage’s Head of Policy provides a veneer of respectability to a politics that seeks fewer restraints, fewer mediating institutions, and less liberal democracy
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Nigel Farage’s ‘Pro-Sleaze’ By-Election Is A Sign Of Terminal Weakness
The Reform leader’s desperate decision to call a back-me-or-sack-me by-election is a sign of a politician who knows he is finally being exposed for the man he really is, argues Adam Bienkov
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‘There’s No Money In Politics If You’re Straight’: How Farage’s Words Are Coming Back To Haunt Him
The Reform UK leader once claimed that only the corrupt could make money in politics. Now questions about his own multi-million pound fortune threaten to bring him down
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‘Why Andy Burnham Must Break With Israel’
The likely incoming Prime Minister must break with Keir Starmer’s “morally bankrupt” legacy on Gaza in order to restore his party’s reputation with the public, argues genocide scholar Martin Shaw
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Why the British Press Is Really Angry About the Government’s Planned Media ‘Prominence’ Law
Julian Petley on the real reasons why the right-wing press are so worried about plans to ensure online platforms prioritise trustworthy news over disinformation
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‘Ten Years On, Brexit’s Real Legacy Has Been an Assault on Human Rights’
The rise of nationalism that followed Brexit has brought with it a concerted campaign to undermine our fundamental human rights, argues Daniel Sohege
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The Real ‘Moral Bankruptcy’ That Brought Down Keir Starmer’s Premiership
The Prime Minister promised to restore morality to our politics, but ended up falling far short of his own standards, argues Adam Bienkov
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‘The Odyssey’ Backlash: A Journey Between Strangeness and Familiarity
The ‘culture war’ around the casting choices of Christopher Nolan’s new adaptation of the Greek epic gets to the very themes Homer was writing about, writes Jake Arnott
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‘Anonymous Quotes’ and Political Journalists: How Spin Doctors Deceive the Public
Peter Oborne considers what a startling admission by a Times journalist reveals about how political reporting and power really work in Westminster
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After Makerfield, the Answer Cannot be Managerial Politics with a Different Accent
Only structural change which seeks to transform a failing system can actually deliver a politics people will believe in, writes Labour MP Clive Lewis
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A Letter from America – The Machine that Eats Elections
I have spent a career building the machines that move votes. I made the ads, practised the dark arts, learned the trade in backrooms where men (yes, it’s almost always men) decide which fear to pour into a 30-second spot. I’ve woven narratives large and small.
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On the Record – Not Music to My Ears
Nigel Farage* reveals how his appearance on the BBC’s Desert Island Discs confirmed his belief about the corporation’s conspiracy against him
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Mandrake – Johnson’s Office Job
Apparently seeing the £60 million personal fortune that Tony and Cherie Blair have amassed as a challenge, Carrie Johnson has ordered her husband, Boris, back into the office.
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Notes on Now – Platner’s Past
Graham Platner has won the Democratic primary to run for the US Senate in Maine. When he started, he said: “I did four infantry tours in the Marine Corps and the Army. I’m not afraid to name an enemy. And the enemy is the oligarchy.”
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That’s True Too – Leave to Remain
Deciding that a documentary is just too excruciating to watch beyond the first 10 minutes isn’t, admittedly, a great way to start a review. But, when I tell you I’m referring to the BBC’s recent two-part series Brexit: A Very British Civil War, you may have some sympathy with me.
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Peter Oborne’s Diary – Dignified Silence
Years ago, I had the privilege of interviewing Peter Carington over lunch at his home in Buckinghamshire. He was 93 years old and the last surviving member of Winston Churchill’s post-war Government.
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Letters – July 2026
Submit a letter for consideration about this month’s edition by emailing the Editors: Miss Hardeep Matharu and Mr Peter Jukes on letters@bylinetimes.com
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‘Burnham is a Giant Step Backwards to a Better Sort of British Politics’
Makerfield’s new MP will face deep challenges if he makes it to Downing Street – but he can succeed where others haven’t been able to
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Makerfield By-Election Result: How Voters Rejected Nigel Farage’s Politics of ‘Pure Cold Rage’
For the third time in a row Reform sought to stoke division and violence on Britain’s streets and have been roundly rejected by voters as a result, reports Adam Bienkov
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‘After Burnham’s Win in Makerfield, the Answer Cannot be Managerial Politics with a Different Accent’
Only structural change which seeks to transform a failing system can actually deliver a politics people will believe in, writes Labour MP Clive Lewis
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Trump Went to War In Order to Break Iran and Left It More Powerful Than Before – US Defence Analyst
Brynn Tannehill explains how Trump’s war has resurrected an Iranian regime that sanctions and drought had been on course to topple
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‘Makerfield Is the Right Seat for Andy Burnham to Contest – Precisely Because It Isn’t Safe’
To beat the threat from Reform UK, Labour has to take it on where Farage’s party could be at its strongest – this is exactly what the Makerfield by-election asks Andy Burnham to do
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‘Northern Ireland Does Not Have an Immigration Problem, It Has a Problem With Violence’
Bad faith actors are exploiting the vulnerabilities of a society scarred by violent disorder and racism, argues Emma De Souza
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‘The Two Big Lies About Trans People at the Heart of the EHRC Codes of Practice’
The EHRC are increasingly struggling to justify their interpretation of the law on the rights of trans people, argues Helen Belcher
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All US Options for Ending the Iran War Are Terrible, Warns US Defence Analyst
Every realistic path to reopening the Strait of Hormuz and ending the war in Iran would be catastrophic, argues Brynn Tannehill.
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Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage and the ‘Pure Cold Rage’ Used to Trigger a Racist Pogrom in Belfast
Mainstream politicians have stood by as the global far-right campaigns for anti-migrant violence on our streets. Now we’re suffering the consequences, argues Adam Bienkov
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Big Oil Employees Wrote Paper Behind Kemi Badenoch’s North Sea Fantasy
The Conservative leader and her media supporters used a new study as evidence to support her plan to increase drilling in the North Sea, without declaring who was really behind it
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Peter Mandelson, the New Statesman, and How the ‘Soft PR’ Sausage Gets Made
Mic Wright looks at evidence of backroom media wheeler dealing revealed in the recent tranche of documents released to Parliament
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Nigel Farage’s ‘White Lives Matter’ Speech Is a Sign of Reform’s Growing Desperation
The Reform leader’s descent into explicitly far-right rhetoric is the mark of a politician and party which fears its time at the top of British politics may soon come to an end, argues Adam Bienkov
