Section: UK

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s ‘Green Industrial Revolution’ is little more than a series of re-heated commitments and under-funded promises.

Peter Geoghegan, investigations editor for Open Democracy, has played a key role in exposing some of the fault lines in our present democracy. In this interview with Ginny Smith he explains what has influenced him, and what motivates him to shine light into the dark corners of UK politics.

Prompted by Boris Johnson’s refusal to sack Priti Patel despite a formal investigation finding evidence of bullying, Vivienne Griffiths recalls her experience of workplace bullying in higher education. Over a five-year period she experienced ongoing bullying from a senior colleague at her university, with significant impact on her professional and personal life.

The UK’s Supreme Court finally achieved full separation of justice and politics just a decade ago.

EU cooperation is vital for our security – although Brexiteers won’t publicly admit it

Could the current PM’s desire to centralise government powers be the very factor that stimulates further devolution?

East Sussex MPs join ranks of Tories prepared to defy the party line

Brighton & Hove City Council has a problem. It represents a population where 12.4% are not white, yet there is only one councillor of colour and the employees of the council are only 7% non-white.

Why should a newspaper or its owner be free to do whatever they like, just because it’s a newspaper?

Nationalism has reinfected the world of late. Not patriotic love of country but nationalism, which looks down on other countries, its adherents deaf to evidence, embracing prejudice, exceptionalism and myths.

The government’s wanton destruction is bent on dividing us. We will resist. We choose unity.

The basic aim of this Code was to produce a dwelling built in an eco-friendly way from sustainable materials that generated a low carbon footprint

Lewes MP Maria Caulfield tries to wriggle out of media storm over free meals for hungry kids

Conservative party conference 2019

Lord Dubs’ enduring conviction that the great British public will ultimately wish to see right prevail may be partly due to his own experience as a child.

US trade deal will usher in lower food standards, warns expert

A fatal flaw in the Remain movement may have been the lack of diverse young voices

The future health of our democracy depends on the existence of an impartial and engaging public broadcaster

As the UK braces itself for round two of the coronavirus pandemic, the conversation has reverted back to subjects from earlier in the year. Perhaps to reassure the public that the second wave may not be as bad, the media touts the gains in hospital beds (or hospitals for that matter), and the amount of […]

University cities are becoming hotbeds of Covid-19. Over the past few weeks, over two million students from all over the UK were encouraged to move into accommodation after six months of being told not to mingle. We are putting ourselves and those around us at risk, only to receive the vast majority of our teaching […]

The fishermen of Hastings once dreamt of a return to a Britain that charted its own course, freed from having to share its coastal waters and fishing opportunities with French, Spanish and Dutch rivals. It was a powerful message behind Brexit – symbolising ‘our island nation’, which once ruled the waves and now had to […]

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948) They’re invisible, intangible and all too easy to lose down the back of the sofa – but you really do need to hang on to human rights. Britain can look back with justifiable pride at a long […]

When Make Votes Matter Lewes began forming in early 2020, we knew we’d need to work hard to build connections in a time of painful political division – but not that we’d have to do so while social distancing. Yet the Covid-19 restrictions forced us to find new ways to connect – across parties, our […]

Meeting Gina Miller, you are struck by her energy, her determination, and her passion for social justice. Although her name first came to public notice at the time of the EU referendum, she has actually been a remarkably successful campaigner over a couple of decades. She was a driving force behind the introduction of the 1996 Special Education Needs Act, and later worked on the report and the draft of the Modern Slavery Act with the Centre for Social Justice.

Increasingly outlandish and inhumane plans to deal with the migrant ‘crisis’ have emerged from the Home Office in recent days. According to the Financial Times, home secretary Priti Patel explored plans to set up asylum processing centres in the South Atlantic. The plans appear to have been dropped only because of the impracticality of shipping […]

The dark days for British democracy are coming in battalions at the moment, but Tuesday’s House of Commons vote on the Internal Market bill still stands out. MPs approved the bill by 340 votes to 256, despite fears that it could lead to the UK breaking international law. The bill is controversial because it contradicts […]

As many children in the UK come to the end of their first few weeks of schooling after the first Covid-19 lockdown, we are reminded of a very different time a year ago. Children and young people in Sussex, and across the world, were marching out of school and making their voices heard for action […]

Remember ‘Lock her up!’ and ‘Build the wall’? Surely not a manifesto for government yet the foundation for Trump’s victory four years ago. We live in an age of populism in which messages matter more than manifestos. Even backbench Tories are complaining that their leadership routinely bypasses them, parliament and democracy.  Rule by the people, […]

During lockdown, I narrowly missed being run down by a speeding van on an otherwise empty road, its driver giving me two fingers as I tried to slow him down. My angry reaction was: us older people are dispensable now. The feeling has been growing – fed by the enveloping Covid crisis. And I’m not […]

The initiator of the LoveEU campaign (“a love letter to Europe”), a key figure in Women4Europe, the leader of the Release the Russia Report demonstrations in Westminster, and one of the founders of savedemocracy.uk, Amanda Robinson typifies the many passionate, committed and creative campaigners on the frontline of the battle to maintain the rule of law in the UK.