Human Rights
The human rights clampdown on free speech
On Wednesday, in a decision that ought to get a good deal more attention than it will, our Supreme Court…
The crazy, corrupt world of the Beijing Olympics
Gstaad OK sport fans, have you been enjoying the concentration camp Olympics? I’m sure the Uighurs in the Chinese gulag…
Have we reached peak human rights?
After the Colston debacle, you might be forgiven for having missed the other legal story that broke this week. The…
The burden of being a Newcastle United fan
The second thing I learned about football, after moving to London, is that you can never, ever switch your allegiance.…
How the ancients handled refugees
Hardly a day goes by without headlines about immigrants, asylum-seekers and refugees. In the ancient world, movements of people were…
Is Ireland cosying up to China?
In 2019, the then-deputy prime minister of Ireland Simon Coveney spoke at the UN Human Rights Council, where he underlined Ireland’s…
Why does China think it can bully backbench MPs like me?
Does the Chinese Communist Party understand how our parliamentary democracy works? The evidence from the last 24 hours suggests not.…
Meghan Markle and the trouble with human rights law
Meghan Markle hailed her victory in a high court privacy case as a ‘comprehensive win’ over the Mail on Sunday’s…
What the West can do about China’s Uyghur labour camps
Who profits from Uyghur labour camps?
The modern celebrity silk: Geoffrey Robertson ticks all the boxes
What makes a barrister famous? At one time, many of the best advocates were also prominent politicians, whose day job…
Punks vs. Putin
What makes for meaningful political protest? In regimes where ideology was taken seriously (such as the Soviet Union or America…
Why leaving the EU wouldn’t make Britain any more free
‘Out’ campaigners picture leaving the EU as a liberation. It wouldn’t be
Rwanda is sliding into a new tragedy. And this time we’re funding it
The ultimate ‘donor darling’ is becoming a dictatorship whose critics live in fear
Turning back refugee boats saves lives - as Australia found out
Turning back boats saves lives
A licence to kill - the slippery slope of 'assisted dying'
If you don’t think legalising ‘assisted dying’ is a slippery slope, you haven’t been paying attention
Driving test advice from 80 years ago
First test The driving test celebrated its 80th anniversary. The first person to take the test, R.E.L. Beene of Kensington,…
Charles Moore’s Notes: people who love making new laws like to present them as human rights
Amnesty International and others have placed a large newspaper advertisement telling Michael Gove ‘Don’t Scrap Our Human Rights’. The ad…
The dark comedy of the Senate torture report
Like many journalists, I’m a bit of a know-it-all — when information is touted as ‘new’, especially in government reports,…
Deng Xiaoping: following in Mao’s footsteps
Much has been written about Deng Xiao-ping (1904–1997), most recently by Ezra Vogel in Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of…
You’ll regret not having a Human Rights Act when Labour get back in
I’ve been thinking about the Conservative party’s proposal for a Bill of Rights and am finding it difficult to make…
The biggest civil liberties outrage you've never heard of
‘Bubble matches’ sound like something quaint. In fact,they’re an outrage against civil liberties
Before you talk about 'Lessons from Rwanda', read this
Twenty years ago, I was a witness to the Rwandan genocide. Those who speak of lessons from it are deluded
Melissa Kite: I can no longer find knickers small enough to fit me
It’s becoming impossible to find knickers in my size
Hugo Rifkind: What is Facebook?
I’d never noticed that there aren’t any tits on Facebook. The place always seems brimming with right tits to me.…
There's a global morality gap — and it's getting wider
The world can now be divided between post- and pre-enlightened countries
