Leading Articles

Leading article: When press freedom and private life collide

Max Mosley's court victory over the News of the World yesterday was immediately mourned in many sections of the media as heralding an end to the era of "kiss-and-tell" in British newspapers. As integral to our popular culture as the saucy seaside postcard and Carry On films, kiss-and-tell stories have, down the years, often been a force for good – morality tales for modern times.

Recent Leading Articles

Leading article: The next colonial scramble

Friday, 25 July 2008

The news that massive deposits of oil and gas have been found in the Arctic confirms what geologists, oil companies and governments have believed for decades: that these icy wastes house vast fossil fuel resources. But the precise estimate now made by the United States Geological Survey – suggesting that the region contains about one-third of the world's undiscovered gas and about one-sixth of its undiscovered oil – is bound, at a time of high oil prices, to accelerate what could well be the world's last great colonial scramble.

Leading article: Code of honour

Friday, 25 July 2008

Bletchley Park at once exemplifies the best and worst of British. As the base for mathematicians and linguists hastily assembled in the early days of the Second World War, it became the headquarters of this country's top-secret code-breaking operation. The model of ingenious making-do and unfussy getting on with things, it is credited with breaking the German Enigma codes and ending the war sooner than would otherwise have been the case. The technology developed there laid the foundations of computer science.

Leading article: Adulation needs to be tempered with realism

Thursday, 24 July 2008

The Democratic candidate for US President embarks today on the second half of a foreign tour designed with two objectives in mind: to convince US voters that he is no innocent abroad and to show his foreign hosts how much more amenable an ally he would be than either George Bush or John McCain.

Leading article: Doctors fit for the purpose

Thursday, 24 July 2008

All patients about to go under the knife or be dosed with powerful drugs want to be certain that the doctor treating them is competent to do the job, in the same way that every airline passenger wants to know that the pilot is fit to fly the plane. Yet while checks on pilots' fitness have been routine for decades, there are no rules to ensure doctors are up to scratch.

Leading article: On track

Thursday, 24 July 2008

Two reports published today by the Commons Public Accounts Committee warn of the distance that London still has to go in preparing for the 2012 Olympics. One points out that, in sporting terms, much effort will have to be applied if Britain is to achieve its target of coming fourth in the medals table that year. The other notes that, while the building programme is "broadly on track", the uncertainties of the economy as a whole and especially the building sector could give rise to late, and costly, changes. It also identifies the lack of a plan for security.

Leading article: A triumph for all of Europe

Wednesday, 23 July 2008

The arrest of Radovan Karadzic has caused rejoicing in the streets of Bosnia and Croatia, where his brand of violent nationalism resulted in tens of thousands of dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. It should also be the cause of some congratulation in Brussels and Western Europe. It was the Serbs who, under a new pro-Western government, who finally and belatedly arrested the man so reviled by his enemies after 12 years in disguise. But it was the lure of membership of the European Union, and the steady demand by European leaders that Serbia first bring its war criminals to justice, that drove them to it.

Leading article: Scandalous failure to care for those most in need

Wednesday, 23 July 2008

Mental illness is on the rise. It has also become one of the biggest, and least-resourced, burdens on the Health Service. Which is why successive government have been so keen to move the problem out of the expensive care of hospitals into the more diffuse, and less expensive, mercies of the outside community.

Leading article: A welcome return to the principles of Beveridge

Tuesday, 22 July 2008

Some were bound to react to the Government's proposals for further welfare reform by attacking them for "punishing people for being poor". They are nothing of the sort, and it does not foster mature political debate to dismiss as right-wing or illiberal the idea that people have a responsibility to work, alongside a right to social support when they are in difficulties. It is true that yesterday's Green Paper targets those in the bottom quartile of the social economy. But the plans are an attack not on poverty so much as on dependency.

Leading article: Failure need not mean catastrophe

Tuesday, 22 July 2008

The seven-year long Doha round of world-trade negotiations has been so peppered with "break or make" crises and "do-or-die" showdowns that the average consumer could be forgiven for wishing that they would just expire so that he or she might never again feel obligated to read about the latest spat between President Sarkozy and the EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson or get to grips with the finer arguments over banana preferences.

Leading article: A flicker of hope

Tuesday, 22 July 2008

Too many hopes have proved vain in Zimbabwe over the months and years for us to set much store by the agreement signed in Harare yesterday by President Mugabe and the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai. Yet the fact that a meeting took place at all, that an agreement was signed, and that hands were shaken, if only for the benefit of the cameras, cannot but represent progress.