Roy Hattersley

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A placard in support of Britain’s opposition Labour party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, during a rally for the National Health Service in London. Credit Ben Stansall/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

EuropaUnión Europea,

The British Labour Party faces the biggest crisis in its history, bigger than 1983 when it polled less than 28 percent of the popular vote and won only 209 seats in the House of Commons. Numerically, the result of the June 8 general election may not be quite as bad for Labour as it was 34 years ago. And, unlike in 1983, a clutch of despairing former Labour cabinet ministers have not chosen to found an unelectable fringe party. But the damage to the party’s prospects today is far deeper.

In 1983, Labour moderates rightly believed that once the extent of the electoral disaster became plain, there would be a slow revival of enthusiasm for electable policies and an electable leadership.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión EuropeaDefensa y Seguridad,

Trident survives. The most severe defence spending review in history — searching for savings of almost £40 billion — ignored the £20 billion that is to be spent on a nuclear weapon that will be redundant before it comes into service. The generals, as has so often been the case, are planning to fight the last war. And the politicians, who must have noticed that the world has changed during the past ten years, endorse the military judgment for reasons that have nothing to do with national security.

The possession of a semi- independent nuclear weapon allows Britain to claim the status of a superpower.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión EuropeaAmpliación

Jens Stoltenberg, the recently re-elected Prime Minister of Norway, could not have been more frank. Asked if entry into the European Union was on his government’s agenda, he replied — almost with pride — that Norway was the only country that had twice rejected Brussels’ embrace. There were, he said, no plans to hold a third referendum. “I was there the last time it was defeated . . . and I don’t seek new defeats.”

He might have added that half of his “coalition of workers, farmers and dreamers” was against membership in principle and that, since Norway benefits from an agreement with the EU that provides the benefits of free trade without the threat of federalism, only diehards want to argue about going right in or staying right out.…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa

Our cause is just. But so it was in 1975, when Iceland decided - unilaterally and illegally - to create an "exclusion zone" around its coast. Foreign trawlers were forbidden to fish within its boundaries.

When Grimsby skippers ignored the edict, Icelandic gunboats severed the cables which connected boats to nets - risking fishermen being cut in half by steel hawsers ripping across the deck. All Whitehall agreed that the Icelanders - the most highly educated people in the world - would respond to an offer of compromise. I was chosen to carry it to Iceland. I returned home full of sympathy for Neville Chamberlain - though, as compared with Reykjavik, Munich was a meeting of true minds.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo

I first met Benazir Bhutto when she was in her last year at Oxford. Wearing a tweed suit and silk headscarf, she looked the perfect Sloane Ranger. When I last saw her she was the prime minister in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. She still wore a headscarf, but the suit had been replaced by a shalwar kameez.The change of style seemed symbolic. Between our first and last meeting, I came to the firm conclusion that - whatever the truth of the allegations that her enemies have made against her - she represents Pakistan's best hope of taking its place among the democratic nations of the free world.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión EuropeaDefensa y Seguridad,

The nuclear deterrent changed my life. In the early 60s - having been rejected by a dozen safe Labour constituencies - I decided that London and parliament were not for me. I would remain in the north, administer my small part of the health service, and guide the housing department of Sheffield city council. Then Hugh Gaitskill promised to "fight and fight again to save the party we love". Suddenly, all I wanted was to be a foot soldier in the battle against the forces of unreason demanding unilateral nuclear disarmament. So I set off again on the long and winding road that led to the Sparkbrook division of Birmingham.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea,

There was a time when military manuals - advising on the conduct of what was called "low-intensity operations" - emphasised the importance of "denying urban guerrillas a hinterland" in which they could take refuge. The Boer commandos in South Africa and Tito's partisans in Yugoslavia (freedom fighters or terrorists according to taste) made sudden strikes against occupying forces and then disappeared into the country. It is important, the army used to say, to prevent the assassins who wait round the corner of city streets from finding safe haven in the homes of sympathetic families. Perhaps the army manuals still give the same advice.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente PróximoEuropaUnión Europea,

Iraq - which for years has been an unmitigated tragedy - has turned into Grand Guignol, and, true to the traditions of that genre, horror and farce combine in equal measure. No doubt we should rejoice that al-Jamiat police station in Basra has been destroyed and its prisoners taken to the relative security of a compound in which detainees are hopefully not routinely tortured. But if a sick satire on an obscure television channel included a sketch about British troops attacking a unit of the police that they established and with whom they had been theoretically working for nearly four years, the outcry would not have been limited to complaints about undermining the morale of our troops under fire.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión EuropeaDefensa y Seguridad,

Strange that so many members of the cabinet who were passionate opponents of nuclear weapons when they were necessary to the country's security should support their retention with equal fervour now that they are irrelevant to Britain's defence.Thirty years ago - when, I will gladly gamble, Margaret Beckett and John Reid supported the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament - the deterrent really deterred. Had there not been what was graphically called "the balance of terror", there would certainly have been war over Berlin, probably over Czechoslovakia and possibly over Hungary. The way the deterrent worked was always too subtle for CND to understand.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea,

The critics have got it wrong. How the royal family behaves is not the issue. The Queen may well, as some newspapers have suggested, be working so hard that her health is endangered. On the other hand, it is equally possible (as other reports claim) that the Prince of Wales was driven to uncontrollable fury by the suggestion that he should be taxed in the same way as his future subjects. But to base judgments about the future of the monarchy on the conduct and character of the sovereign and her successor is to reduce the constitutional debate to the level of triviality that Jeremy Paxman managed to sustain for almost a whole book on the subject.…  Seguir leyendo »