Ian Birrell

The choreography has become wearily familiar. The prime minister is entangled in turmoil; the public turns against them; their party panics, and MPs boot them out of power, despite having previously hailed them as national saviours. A successor...

Whatever happens over the next few months, Andy Burnham's government is a major improvement on its predecessor in one significant regard: it has shed the arrogant science minister who was so contemptuous of the public.

Like many others, I was struck by the strange 'coincidence' that Covid erupted in the city with a secretive lab containing the world's biggest repository of bat coronaviruses.

Ian Birrell: Our prison system is a mess, absorbing the consequences of political failures in education, health and social care

When Andy Burnham stood outside Downing Street last week, having achieved his long-held ambition to lead this country, he told us that he was “a circuit breaker for Britain” who would change politics to make it “more about problem-solving than point-...

A supposed sanctuary for vulnerable teenagers and two similar unregistered homes in Kent run by the same company earned almost £1.8million in three years - despite its illegality.

Ian Birrell: They want to open a fresh front line in the culture wars

The sun was shining, the sausages sizzling and the lager flowing as several hundred people chatted at a traditional German Grillfest in the garden of a family-run hotel.

The footage was horrific: a massive wave of ice, mud and floodwater smashing into buildings on the border between China and Nepal with devastating force, sweeping away bridges and cars. Stunned onlookers watched as homes crumpled and towns disappeared. Terrified construction workers were seen fleeing for their lives. No wonder the distressing videos, snatched on smartphones, led global news reports as it emerged that the hundreds of missing people in this Himalayan tragedy included tourists from at least 30 nations. Yet in China, the state broadcaster led its Thursday evening report on the launch of a new book by President […]

Ian Birrell: We must do so much more to defend both Ukraine and our own democracy from the threat of this evil and toxic dictatorship