Faith and Politics: the monopoly of the Religious Right

Mike Huckabee’s Iowa victory last week has stirred a sleeping giant in US politics. It was a timely reminder that the Religious Right owns a large section of America’s conservative electorate. We can forget Barack Obama’s enormous grassroots appeal, his massive student following, his precinct captains and armies of volunteers. Nothing can match the pull [...]

Where have all the heroes gone?

It is commonly said that all politicians are the same. And, sadly, in and amongst all the outrageous generalisations, the oversimplifications, and the downright crude arguments, there is some truth to it. While I often find myself exploding in impassioned fits of political idealism whenever anyone dares to confront me with such cynicism, examples do [...]

America’s violent love affair: the moral bankruptcy of capital punishment in the United States

On May 20th, 1987, Edward Earl Johnson, one of the overwhelmingly disproportionate number of African Americans awaiting execution on death row, was put to death in a gas chamber in Mississippi. He had been the subject of a BBC Documentary, Fourteen Days in May, which had intimately captured the final two weeks of his life, [...]

For Fantasists and Fanatics: Direct Democracy is a Fraud

It is in the ‘national interest’, Mr. Brown thundered as he addressed the House of Commons over his decision not to hold a referendum on the new EU treaty. As the Conservatives waved their arms and cried high treason, Brown prudently shuffled out of the chamber and quietly headed back to Number Ten.
How could [...]