A quiet suburban street set in the leafy suburbs of Cheadle, Manchester, yesterday witnessed a coming together of a former Leader of Manchester City Council, Labour MP Graham Stringer and a local Conservative MP with a strong independent streak, David Nuttall. This unlikely couple had joined forces with activists from...

Make no mistake, Vladimir Putin's blog, published today on The Huffington Post, is a very clear statement of intent from a man who believes that he is president in waiting. It is also one from a man who knows that his first term in office as president is...

In 1956, as the British and the French launched their ill fated bid to seize back the Suez Canal from General Nasser, the Soviet Union used this as cover to send in its tanks to crush the Hungarian uprising. As the World focussed it's fury on the British and French...

War is an obscenity. Yet somehow a civil war transcends even that. Today Syrians are killing Syrians with an intensity and ferocity that seemingly knows no bounds. The sheer scale of the attacks now being launched by the Syrian State on rebels and civilians alike has bought about howls of...

Those expecting UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon to use his second term as a period of quiet consolidation, before beginning the slow process of winding down, were in for a surprise as the New Year began.

The 67 year old instead announced his priorities, aimed primarily at fostering the...

I have reported from inside North Korea on several occasions, travelling widely and was the first reporter to report live from the capital, Pyongyang for al Jazeera English TV. I have also travelled and reported from South Korea. None of this gives any special insight, but since so few have...

A former British Prime Minister, James Callaghan, once warned that sudden squalls could blow into major storms, and often from unexpected places. Not very long afterwards, the Argentinians began to make bellicose noises towards the British ruled Falkland Islands, which they claimed as the Islas Malvinas.

This was 1978,...

Before history is quickly re-written and the essentials forgotten, the vote taken on Monday night in the House of Commons on whether British voters should be allowed a referendum on membership of the European Union came about because a petition of over one hundred thousand electors demanding just that had...

A former British Prime Minister, James Callaghan will forever be remembered for the words 'Crisis? What crisis?' even though he never actually said them. Callaghan had the misfortune of having his ever so slightly complacent remarks on his country's dire economic situation turned into tabloid-ese in the late 1970s. He...

Sir Brian Urquhart, one of the oldest surviving senior UN staff members, reminded us recently in an article in the New York Times that a former Secretary General of the UN, Dag Hammarskjold, had once said; "The United Nations was not created to bring us heaven, but to save us...

It simply beggars belief that there are some in the British media who still take the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, even vaguely seriously. Last Friday, we were treated to two 'exclusives' featuring Blair; on the front pages of The Times and the the Daily Mirror. All this in...

Former Prime Minister, Tony Blair and former UK Foreign Secretaries Jack Straw and David Miliband, now face some extremely tough questions as to how much they knew about the extraordinary rendition of prisoners to Libya where they were tortured.

The discovery of some extraordinary archives in the ruins of...

The economic crisis is proving useful for those who want to see the European Union make the final and logical leap to becoming a unitary state, with a single currency and a single government. That is what some of the Euro-sceptics of Left and Right have been saying, but because...

We live in the age of instant punditry, and I am as guilty of it as anyone else. On the basis of having reported from inside Libya three or four times from the early 1990s onwards, some UK media stations have had me on as a commentator. But what can...

When President Bashar al Assad was elected (unopposed) in 2000, many in the West heralded this as progress. Assad's father in law, Fahwaz - who I came to know - was a Harley Street doctor in London. Assad himself was young, metropolitan and talked of reform. It was possible to...

One there was 'Watergate'; now every minor, irritating little faux scandal as the mocniker 'gate' attached to it. The latest being 'Tipgate', an August silly season story that has found the Prime Minister, David Cameron failing to pay a tip in an Italian restaurant. Here is the story, breathlessly revealed...

No journalist worth his or her salt should rejoice in the downfall of another. There are plenty of commentators in particular that I could name who infuriate me, who have in fact infuriated for me for years, or who I have had real spats with. I would be disappointed if...