Jawad Iqbal is a broadcaster and ex-television news executive. Jawad is a former Visiting Senior Fellow in the Institute of Global Affairs at the LSE
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The government is making a mistake in turning a blind eye to China’s plans to send a high ranking politician responsible for crushing democratic freedoms in Hong Kong to the King’s coronation. Han Zheng, who was appointed President Xi’s deputy last month, is due to represent China at the historic event on 6 May. In
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Indians now make up the second-biggest cohort of Channel migrants: 675 Indians arrived in small boats in the first three months of this year, according to Home Office figures. This amounts to almost a fifth of the total 3,793 crossings made in the first quarter of this year. The number represents a stark rise: only
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It must rank as some form of political satire that Angela Merkel has been awarded Germany’s highest political honour. Not least because the former Chancellor will most likely be remembered foremost for turning a blind eye to the security threat posed by Russia. The Grand Cross of the Order of Merit has previously been given
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No one really expects much in the way of principles or morality from those charged with running international sport. The Qatar World Cup was merely the latest, most blatant example of the iron rule that money and greed conquers all in sport. But for a brief moment — 16 months to be precise — the
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The Unesco world heritage status award is a curious kind of international beauty contest in which historic locations vie to be anointed worthy of special recognition by a committee of UN cultural bigwigs. This supposedly brings with it some form of wider symbolic cultural validation through international acclaim. In fact what it really brings —
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Elon Musk, the Twitter owner, is in his own words a ‘free speech absolutist’. He promised to combat censorship and allow a broader range of voices on the social media platform as part of his pitch for acquiring the company last October. It is, then, hard to square his free speech bombast with recent events in
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On 2 August 1939, Albert Einstein – at that time the most famous scientist in the world – put his name to a letter addressed to President Franklin D Roosevelt. In it he warned that the Nazis might be developing an atomic bomb and could bring about a chain of events that would lead to
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Humza Yousaf, the new First Minister of Scotland after his victory in the SNP leadership election, deserves his moment in the sun. Yousaf is Scotland’s first ethnic minority leader and the first Muslim leader of the governing party. Legitimate questions about whether he is up to the job must wait while credit is given for
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Democracy and the rule of law have always struggled to take hold in Pakistan, a country in which no elected prime minister has yet completed a full term in office and where the military has been in power for nearly half of its history. The latest antics of Imran Khan, the former prime minister, do
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It is something of a mystery why being named UK City of Culture is seen in some quarters as a great civic accolade, a glorious first step on the road to social, economic and cultural regeneration. The experience of Coventry (the winner for 2021) reveals the many downsides to winning this dubious cultural prize. It
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Welcome to the divisive and somewhat sinister world of racial ‘microaggressions’. Loosely defined as ‘a subtle slight or action that leaves people from a minority group feeling upset, offended or uncomfortable,’ the person who has delivered the insult might even be oblivious they have caused offence. The latest manifestation of its chilling effect on workplace
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The apparently irresistible rise of Humza Yousaf, the SNP politician seen as the frontrunner to succeed Nicola Sturgeon as Scotland’s first minister, reveals much about the dearth of talent at the very top of Scottish politics. Yousaf is a politician with almost no discernible achievements to his name despite almost a decade in senior ministerial
