Politics

The Left are guilty of their own petty, spiteful little prejudices One of the great stereotypes of British politics is that the Right are money obsessed, cold, cynical, uncaring and intolerant, whereas the Left are misty-eyed dreamers, fueled by rainbows and pixie dust, with free money, love and tolerance for...

Later today, in the Devon seaside town of Torquay, the United Kingdom Independence Party will announce its new leader. It’s unlikely to be a tame affair. The choice UKIP members have made will have a profound impact on the future direction of the party, and quite plausibly of the...

You wouldn’t think that an antidepressant, a medication which is supposed to alleviate depression, would cause someone to want to end their life. However, since antidepressants have been on the market, we have seen a marked increase of self-harm, suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts and completed suicides associated with their...

  It’s coming up to the most wonderful time of the year… hey, it’s after Halloween, it’s after Bonfire Night, I can talk about Christmas now!  Advent calendars and mince pie mix are flooding into shops, and the rampant crush of adverts telling us to buy everything we can, as...

Thank you for being a reader and visitor to The Backbencher Online Magazine. Recent weeks have been very busy. We have been putting together our new editorial team and the new Website which we launched last week. In May, we reached out for people who wanted to become contributors and writers...

The Dumbledore of the Left, veteran Labour Party politician Tony Benn  died today aged 88. Born in 1925, Benn held several cabinet positions between 1966 and 1979. He was a leading socialist and advocate of "participatory democracy." He gained perhaps even greater notoriety in later years when he published a series of...

The essence of the polity we call a nation-state can be a nebulous concept to visualise, let alone articulate. Yet, despite the apparent elusiveness of precise definition, for 364 years since the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia it’s been not only the most successful form of polity in humans’ organisation...

It could easily be a picture of two different countries: crowds of smiling, patriotic Trump supporters cheering as their new President announces an end to difficulties for the working class and vows to eradicate radical Islamic terrorism from the face of this planet, as if those are things at...

The Backbencher needs you! The Backbencher.co.uk has been trying to expand again after a bumpy start this year. We have decided that it's time to bring on new daily and weekly contributors. If you are a libertarian minded and have an interest in writing about news and current affairs, get in...