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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Voting takes place in Iran’s snap presidential election today – a contest brought forward by the death last month in a helicopter crash of the former president Ebrahim Raisi. A few predictions can be made with absolute certainty. Firstly, the winner will be a man (there are no women taking part – Iran’s ruling clerics
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England manager Gareth Southgate has led a charmed life for far too long – eight years and three international tournaments before this one, to be precise. The moment of reckoning is now most definitely upon him. Everything, from the reputation of this supposedly stellar group of players to Southgate’s credibility as a coach, is on the
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What passes for democratic politics in India is something of a strange beast. Take, for example, the announcement in recent days that Priyanka Gandhi – scion of the dynasty that has produced three former prime ministers – is to run for the Indian parliament for the first time. She will stand for the main opposition Congress
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It is still early days but Euro 2024 in Germany has yet to take off as a tournament. It is hard to say why exactly. It has not been uniformly dull – England’s failings have generated interest aplenty. The opening match between Germany and Scotland was a goal-fest, ending in a 5-1 win for Germany.
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Tonight’s England game against Denmark at the Frankfurt Arena should be made compulsory viewing for those who blindly insist that this group of players under manager Gareth Southgate are favourites to win the Euros. No one can surely continue to believe such nonsense after yet another utterly toothless and dire display of footballing cluelessness. The
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Football hooliganism made an ugly return to the Euros just hours before England‘s opening Group C match against Serbia. There were violent clashes in the west German city of Gelsenkirchen between rival fans in shameful scenes. Riot police moved in quickly to restore order: a number of arrests were made and investigations are ongoing. The
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Snooker is just the latest sport to succumb to the eye-watering sums of money on offer from authoritarian regimes. Saudi Arabia will host its first ranking event in August, with a £2 million prize fund – the highest of any tournament outside the World Championship. It follows the Riyadh Season World Masters of Snooker, held
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Is Rishi Sunak Labour’s not-so-secret weapon in this election campaign? The question has to be asked after Sunak’s latest political gaffe during an interview with ITV, due to be broadcast tonight, in which he is asked to speak about his experiences growing up. This line of questioning – in the hands of any normal politician –
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Vaughan Gething, First Minister of Wales, has managed to achieve the remarkable feat of losing a no confidence vote – just 77 days into his leadership. Defeat was inevitable after two of his Labour colleagues in the Welsh Senedd called in sick. During an often heated debate, Gething at one point appeared visibly emotional and had
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There was never really any serious doubt that India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, would win a historic third term in power. The bigger question in the Indian election was how big his victory would be. There were widespread predictions that Modi would win by a landslide, with the prime minister himself setting an ambitious goal
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The Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Ed Davey, has come up with a novel way of ensuring his party gets greater coverage during the long weeks of the election campaign. His wheeze is to ensure that, each and every day, he is pictured doing something silly. It doesn’t help that the party’s leader appears to think that
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The Labour leadership has only itself to blame for becoming embroiled in a bitter and divisive row over the future of Dianne Abbott, the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington. She was suspended from the party in April last year after writing a letter to the Observer that appeared to play down racism against
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The provisional England squad for the Euros unveiled by manager Gareth Southgate contains one notable omission: Jordan Henderson. That’s a big surprise, not because the midfielder deserves to be on the plane to Germany this summer, but for what it says about the thinking of the normally ultra-loyal Southgate, who is often accused of picking
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Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi and the country’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian have been killed in a helicopter crash in north-western Iran, according to the country’s state media. The news that Raisi – second only to the country’s supreme leader in the power structure – and Amir-Abdollahian – a critical and influential figure in the ruling
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Manchester City have been crowned Premier League champions for an unprecedented fourth time in a row. They go into the record books after beating West Ham 3-1 at the Etihad stadium. It is a remarkable feat: never in 135 years of English league football has a club won four consecutive top-flight titles. City can arguably
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Plaid Cymru’s sudden decision to end its co-operation deal with Labour in Wales piles even more pressure on the First Minister, Vaughan Gething. It caps a tumultuous week for Gething, who on Thursday sacked one of his ministers in a row over a leaked text message. The collapse of the deal with Plaid leaves Welsh
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A suggested government ban on rainbow-coloured lanyards in the civil service has, perhaps unsurprisingly, proved divisive at the highest reaches of government. The idea for the ban came from Esther McVey, officially a minister without portfolio but more widely known as ‘the minister for common sense’. In a speech on Monday, McVey suggested that permanent
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Two questions dominated last night’s Eurovision Song Contest final in Malmo, Sweden. First, whether 20-year-old Eden Golan, Israel’s entrant, would defy the odds and actually win. And secondly, whether some kind of security breach involving pro-Palestinian protesters would result in the final being disrupted. In the end, proceedings passed off relatively peacefully. The eventual winner
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The Indian chess prodigy Dommaraju Gukesh has made history by becoming the youngest challenger ever for the world chess title. His shot at the world championship comes after a sensational victory at the prestigious men’s Candidates chess tournament in Toronto last weekend. ‘I am so relieved and so happy’, he told reporters in his trademark
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University campuses across the United States are facing a growing wave of student-led protests over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Campus officials have responded by taking unprecedented measures, including calling in the police, to try to clamp down on the unrest and contain an increasingly chaotic situation. The end result? Some of America’s most prestigious
