Seumas Milne

Britain needs elected head of state

AS a rule, progressive Britain prefers to ignore the monarchy. First, it's embarrassing: 364 years after we first... Updated 25 Jul, 2013 07:21am

Time not just to bury Thatcher, but Thatcherism as well

THEY have only themselves to blame. Protests were always likely at any official sendoff for the most socially destructive prime minister in modern British history. But by turning Margaret Thatcher’s funeral into a state-funded Tory jamboree, puffed up wit Published 18 Apr, 2013 02:15am

Make it impossible to inflict Iraq barbarism again

IF anyone doubted what kind of Iraq has been bequeathed by a decade of US-sponsored occupation and war, Tuesday’s deadly sectarian bomb attacks around Baghdad against bus queues and markets should have set Published 21 Mar, 2013 04:06am

Intervention in Syria risks blowback

THE signs are unmistakable. Once again, the west is preparing to escalate military intervention in the Arab and Muslim world. This time the target is Syria. Since the US presidential election, the warnings have Published 20 Dec, 2012 02:50am

Anti-West protests no surprise

LONDON: Eleven years after it began, Nato's occupation of Afghanistan is crumbling. The US decision to suspend joint Afghan-Nato operations in response to a wave of attacks by Afghan soldiers and police on Nato troops cuts the ground from beneath the cent Published 20 Sep, 2012 01:06am

Intervention drives Syria’s descent into darkness

LONDON: The destruction of Syria is now in full flow. What began as a popular uprising 17 months ago is now an all-out civil war fuelled by regional and global powers that threatens to engulf the entire Middle East. As the battle for the ancient Published 08 Aug, 2012 11:21pm

Foreign intervention will shed more Syrian blood

AS Syria descends deeper into civil war and human misery, pressure for yet another western military intervention in the Arab world is growing. Last week, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US joint Published 07 Jun, 2012 02:26am

Murderous US drone campaign fuelling terror

MORE than a decade after George W. Bush launched it, the “war on terror” was supposed to be winding down. US military occupation of Iraq has ended and Nato is looking for a way out of Afghanistan, even as Published 30 May, 2012 08:20pm

Europe needs to ditch austerity model

DEMOCRACY has never been the European Union’s strongest suit. It’s an institution where the unelected and the barely accountable have always called the shots — and electorates are routinely made Published 23 May, 2012 09:14pm

Nato’s shame in Libya

LIBYA was supposed to be different. The lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan had been learned, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy insisted last year. This would be a real humanitarian intervention. Published 17 May, 2012 12:01am

Big political gap between France, UK

LONDON: If next month's presidential election turns out as expected, France is heading for confrontation over the disastrous austerity drive now choking the economic life out of the eurozone. As in Britain, the economy is struggling to recover from the cr Published 04 Apr, 2012 09:43pm

Afghan massacre

IT was an “isolated incident”, US officials insisted. The murder of 16 Afghan civilians as they slept, Hillary Clinton declared, was the “inexplicable act” of one soldier. Published 14 Mar, 2012 10:31pm

Attack on Iran likened to criminal stupidity

LONDON: After a decade of calamitous western wars in the wider Middle East, the signs are becoming ever more ominous that we’re heading for yet another. And, hard as it is to credit, the same discredited arguments used to justify the disasters of Iraq and Published 22 Feb, 2012 10:34pm

Intervention in Syria not to stop killing

LONDON: There is no limit, it seems, to the blood price Arabs have to pay for their “spring”. After the carnage in Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Libya, Syria’s 11-month-old uprising grows ever more gruesome. Published 08 Feb, 2012 10:55pm