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Image description: Ulster Defence Association mural with man wearing balaclava and aiming a gun. “It is the people of Northern Ireland who will suffer” if an agreement is not reached over the Northern Ireland Protocol, stated Lord Jay of Ewelme, the head of a House of Lords committee examining the problem. What’s new? After months […]
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Image Description: A close up of Keir Starmer’s face I take full responsibility- Keir Starmer’s words in the aftermath of Labour’s loss at the Hartlepool by-election and a disappointing performance at local elections across the county. Yet, less than a day later, rumours were circulating that Starmer was moving to sack Deputy Leader, Angela Rayner, […]
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Image Description: A sign at a demonstration reading ‘the future is female’ PROPOSITION (Uri Shine) At its core, feminism is the belief that discrimination against women should be stamped out and replaced by equal rights and opportunities for people of all sexes, and a feminist is someone who holds such a belief. In practice, the […]
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Image description: Boris Johnson speaking while sitting at a desk, in the background is a large UK flag PROPOSITION (Ciara Garcha) Plans to create a breakaway European Super League were likened to a “cartel” by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who assured fans that the government would not stand by while a small handful of owners […]
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Image Description: Monochrome photo of hands holding a copy of Marquez’s book “Over the weekend the vultures got into the Presidential Palace by pecking through the screens on the balcony windows, and the flapping of their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside, and at dawn on Monday the city awoke out of its lethargy […]
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Image description: Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu with his bodyguard Frank Senteza aka Frank during campaigning. Frank is wearing a red top with a picture of Robert, they both have a fist raised. Uganda’s January elections saw Bobi Wine, a musician who gained political credibility and a loyal following through his pop career, challenge President Yoweri Museveni, […]
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Image Description: the Reichstag Building on a sunny day. Across a decade which has seen convulsion and upheaval across parts of Europe, one unusual constant on the political landscape has been Angela Merkel. First elected as Chancellor of Germany in 2005, she is one of the longest serving democratically-elected European leaders in history, meaning her […]
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Image Description: Banners that read ‘climate justice for all’ and ‘Stop HS2’ “It’s not politics, it’s science!”. For years now, this has become something of a mantra for a whole swathe of different movements. Coronavirus is the latest example, but long before that, it was embedded in the discourse around climate change. There, as with […]
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Image Description: a headshot of Siân Berry against the backdrop of a drawing of Oxford’s skyline and the text ‘Siân Berry: Alumni Series’ This week’s alumni is Siân Berry, a former Materials Science student at Trinity College who went on to become politically active within the Green Party. Since 2018 she has been co-leader of […]
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Image description: A Gavel on a black background. The Shamima Begum Supreme Court judgment is complicated. It covers a wide range of subjects over a number of appeals and cross-appeals, and there are elements heavily embedded in case-law and statute. This was not a mere political decision. The Supreme Court has unanimously supported the judgment […]
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Image Description: a headshot of Grace Blakeley against the backdrop of a drawing of Oxford’s skyline and the text ‘Grace Blakeley: Alumni Series’ To start off our Alumni series, I was very excited to speak to Grace Blakeley, a former PPE student at my own college, St Peter’s. A prominent figure on the left in […]
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Image Description: San Francisco 49ers kneel during the National Anthem Are politics and sport really that inseparable? Or should we view the sporting arena as a platform that inevitably and rightly is used to further social progress? After the US boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Avery Brundage, the acting International Olympic Committee President during WWII, […]
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As the dust of the US presidential election settles and the clearing of the debris begins, it’s time we pay attention to the hundreds of other celebrations awaiting their turn. For Biden and Trump were far from the only candidates on the ballot. Following what has otherwise been a bleak and dark year, a record number of LGBTQ+ […]
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Image Description: Gina Martin in front of a blue background Trigger Warning: Discussion of upskirting, sexual assault and rape Next up in our ‘Womxn on the Move’ series is Gina Martin: campaigner, speaker and writer who took on the government to make upskirting (taking a sexually intrusive and non-consensual photograph up someone’s skirt) illegal in […]
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Image description: the painting Applications for Admission to a Casual Ward, a Victorian painting by Sir Luke Fildes. Impoverished men, women and children line up outside a police station to prove their eligibility to spend a night in a workhouse. Read Matteo’s last column: https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2020/10/24/the-scarcity-of-politics/ In my last column, I argued that we rarely acknowledge […]
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Image description: a dark hospital room. Morality has played a key role in the coronavirus crisis. Doctors were forced to choose who to save, public health officials were forced to weigh freedom against safety, whole societies were put on halt. All in the name of morality. After all, it would be criminal to stand aside […]
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Image description: screen on truck reads “Holocaust deniers harboured by Labour”. Edited over the top is Jeremy Corbyn’s outline, over which is placed a prohibition symbol, as well as Boris Johnson’s outline, over which is placed a question mark. CW: discussion of anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic tropes Finally, Labour has begun to tackle the anti-Semitism rife […]
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Read Matteo’s column from last week HERE Image description: Old drawing of British House of Commons engulfed by flames in the fire of 1834 In a 1993 lecture on the differences between political and economic decision making, the libertarian American economist Thomas Sowell famously quipped: “Scarcity is the first lesson of economics. The first lesson […]
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Image description: A close-up shot of Saint Basil’s Cathedral. In the latest installment of this year’s biblical succession of bad news, July began with an ‘all Russia vote’ (lacking the legal status of a referendum) on a bleak new package of constitutional amendments: a mishmash of national populism, cultural conservatism and centralist authoritarianism. Those who […]
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