"I'm not racist," Rose told me over a cup of tea, "but immigration has got too much."

It was the 27 August 2011 and I was in Romford, Essex, on the first day of a three-month tour around the UK seeking the views of ordinary people about the state of...

As the Prime Minister announces two investigations into claims of child abuse at North Wales children's homes in which a senior political figure of the Thatcher era is allegedly implicated, we might well ask what will come next. Over recent years, the reputations of our biggest public institutions have been...

'Boris Johnson is Britain's most respected politician' read the headline in Guardian: a Yougov poll had shown that Boris Johnson had experienced a big bounce in support in the warm afterglow of the London Olympics and Paralympics.

In the survey, he had been given a net respect...

As Mo Farah sprinted for the line, running quicker after nine thousand, nine hundred metres than most of us will ever run in our lives, the crowd behind him rose to their feet and roared in complete joy, a sea of delirious faces and Union flags.

It was perhaps...

And we thought the Opening Ceremony was good...

Yesterday was one of the great days in British sporting history. From Eton Dorney to the Velodrome to Wimbledon and then finally to the Olympic Stadium, we won, won and won again.

In a cynical society where we seldom believe take what...

This is a seminal moment for the United Kingdom when the eyes of the world are on us. The Olympic opening ceremony showed the country at its most assured: true to its past, but not weighed down by it; capable of being spectacular, but also of being thoughtful, moving and...

The Olympic opening ceremony was beautiful, the stuff of dreams played out in Stratford.

It was the confidence of it all that was perhaps most inspiring: the willingness to be true to idiosyncratic Britain rather than worrying about comparisons with Beijing four years ago; the readiness to...

It is a momentous day in our country, a day when eyes of the world will turn to us and we can celebrate being British. We will no doubt take much pride in Team Great Britain, but across the Irish Sea, a contested corner of the United Kingdom remains troubled.

We are largely contented in our lives but worried about our community and our country

Yesterday's Office of National Statistics figures on life satisfaction in Britain paint a picture of a happy nation. While there are variations by geography and demography, the average life satisfaction in the UK...