At their joint press conference at Downing Street yesterday, the contrast in manner was as sharp as ever, but a new air of understanding, almost bonhomie, seemed to have settled on what was once one of the less comfortable bilateral relationships in ...

A hung parliament in which the Lib-Dems hold the balance of power could conceivably give the impetus to remove Brown as leader of the Labour Party and replace him with someone who understood strategy as well as tactics, it could give us proportional ...

Perhaps they had bonded over their shared adversity. Or maybe they had been cheered by the realisation that they had something else in common – a mutual distrust of David Cameron. The French leader came as close to endorsing Mr Brown's campaign for a...

Health Secretary Andy Burnham refused to rule out a 10 per cent "death tax" to provide residential care for Britain's rapidly ageing population. Andrew Lansley, shadow Secretary of State for Health, whose party favours hiking the inheritance tax thre...

The NHS has spent most of the cash we were promised in offsetting its deficits and in promoting itself rather than giving us a break from caring. Although government says that it is up to the local NHS to decide how to prioritise its budgets, we care...

In other words out goes any chance of the pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi – still under house arrest – or any member of the democracy parties now languishing in prison on political charges or any monk, whether they have been involved in past de...

Pink Floyd, are, after all, of that first generation of rock musicians who regarded themselves not as jukebox fillers but producing something "progressive", mature and thematic, classical even in scope. In the Seventies, there was a divide between th...

Portobello Road, London's fifth most-visited tourist attraction, has this year suffered the replacement of one of its basement antiques markets with a colossal branch of All Saints. Property prices and rates are up, pushing out the silver dealers and...

The 11th Century saw far more of the population responsible for their own personal survival than modern Britain. If I wanted my family to eat I would generally need to grow crops but I would also know how to start a fire, what time of year to sow see...

These "facts" – and let us not forget the disclosure that 48 per cent of women admit faking an orgasm, and 9 per cent do it all the time – were all published by British newspapers last week. They were all the result of surveys, the quickest way to a ...

Anyway, what you most need to know is that denim is either in or out this season. I'm not sure which, but you can be absolutely sure it's one or the other. It may even be in and out on the same day; in before noon, say, and out for the afternoon – an...

In 2006 I was asked to join the Independent Asylum Commission, which was inquiring into national policies on asylum. One of the key findings was the need to restore public confidence that asylum policies were in keeping with British values on sanctua...