Bettina Gronblom

Adviser, Writer

We are caught in a spiral of fear, leading to more violence and not leaving enough room for love. So a big real part of the 'war on terror' is one which takes place within us. It is one where we let our fears lead us to hate. 'Fighting' our own fears then becomes the war worth fighting and the way we can stop this cycle of violence. And we need to start uplifting others along with us.

James Snell

Writer for Politiker UK and Contributing Editor for The Libertarian

It is a sign of political degradation when a former national leader cannot write a piece in a Sunday newspaper, about an issue with which he is intimately involved, without attracting a huge amount of venom, by people who have either not even read the article in question, and just attack Blair for being Blair.

Robin Lustig

Journalist and broadcaster

If it weren't for the God-awful mess in Syria, I suspect we'd be paying a great deal more attention to the God-awful mess in Iraq. We should be, anyway. This month alone, more than 500 people have been killed in almost daily bomb attacks, and last month was reported to be the most violent the country has seen for nearly five years.

Jack Butler

Student, English and Creative Writing

Getting rid of Osborne would be a major break from Cameron's stable government agenda. Yet surely the benefits outweigh the costs. It could be accompanied by a mea culpa over this government's misguided economic policy, and show the public that Cameron is able to sacrifice one of the key figures of his Bullingdon clique to save the British economy.

Reyhana Patel

Freelance journalist, writer, researcher

We need an open discussion on foreign policy where no one should be silenced for disagreeing or agreeing with mainstream political views. Will Afghans be better off when the troops withdraw? Was going into Iraq a mistake? Who is being held accountable for the killing of civilians? The majority of Muslims want answers to these questions.

Ashish Prashar

Head of Media Relations at Ipsos MORI

Like Justine Greening, I can't understand the arguments made by some against spending 0.7% of GNI to relieve suffering overseas. They should remember that 7p in every £10 is a small slice of our national income when compared with the spectre of people dying unnecessarily, living without access to education or even clean water.

Ian Linden

Senior Advisor at the Tony Blair Faith Foundation

There is a growing amount known about the role of religion in the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa. Or, at least, this has been a privileged area in the thin research available on religion and health. But the framing, in the mass media and contemporary debates, of religious interventions in prevention and stigma has meant that very little of it has trickled out of specialist publications.

Philip White

Author of Churchill's Cold War

I was delighted to read last week's news that from 2016, Winston Churchill will be the new face of the fiver (five pound note, about $7.50, if you're reading this in the US). Now, my reaction isn't surprising, given that I wrote a book about Sir Winston. But it goes far beyond my appreciation for the man who led Britain through her darkest hour and into her finest.

Alastair Carr

English boy in Scotland, aptly studying International Relations

So as Bill bounces goofily round the globe, adored at every corner, Tony provokes and irritates whilst bewildering us with an effortless master class in realpolitik, something that I miss in British politics.

Azeem Ibrahim

Executive Chairman, The Scotland Institute

Now is the time for the Labour party to create a new discourse and move away from "the Reagan and Thatcher settlement" Ed Miliband knows that he cannot sit back and watch the Coalition unravel, but if he is to win the next election, he has to set out moral and ideological terms for the future of the party.

Tony Lobl

Tony is a Christian Science practitioner and a blogger

Over several decades I've found that identifying ourselves in terms of such spiritual qualities can be liberating. It can loosen the grip of the conviction life is primarily shaped by material factors and bring out a sense of health, rather than sickness, being the divine default.

Robert Philpot

Director and editor of Progress

The degree to which Blair's time in office was merely a continuation of Thatcherism has long been hotly debated, and it is a subject that has been returned to often over the past week.

Robert Philpot

Director and editor of Progress

Labour's 'angry brigade' has misunderstood Blair's message which is simply: don't let red mist cloud your judgement. Rather than getting angry with the Tories, get even with them. And, on this, Blair is right: Labour needs to be in the business of the politics of answers, not simply the politics of anger.

Mark Hillary

British tech, culture, and globalisation writer based in São Paulo

Thatcher still manages to divide opinion in a way that no other British leader has achieved. Even Tony Blair's false wars don't create the same kind of hatred.

Bonnie Greer

American-born, London-based playwright, author and novelist

Now that Osbornomics has failed even by its own parameters, and the right of the party and traditional Tories have had it with the both of them, Cameron has to Do Something. That Something is a new strategy which takes a little bit from here and a little bit from there. Mostly from there: America and Australia. Osborne in his latest big speech refers to "the British People" - a Tea Party tactic. By calling your supporters "the British People" you imply that your opponents aren't. Fox News does this with its "the American People" jibe all the time.

Daniel Wickham

Daniel Wickham is an independent journalist and activist going on to study History and Politics at university

Throughout the war, our governments insisted that they had a genuine humanitarian interest in bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq. To put it simply, this is a lie, and needs to be exposed as such. A brief look at the West's record in the Middle East provides all the evidence we need in order to unearth the great myth of 'humanitarian intervention' in Iraq.