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- Edition 81 – January 2026 – Cover + Contents
- Editorial – Sanctuary
- Peter Oborne's Diary – A Dangerous Sponsor
- News In Brief – Cryptic Comments
- ‘Lies’ and the Lobby
- That's True Too – In Pursuit of Pluralism – Imagining the Possibilities
- A Red Top Christmas Carol
- For Better Or For Worse – A Boring, Violent Life
- For Better Or For Worse – The Fallacy of the Mean
- For Better Or For Worse – Reclaiming a Social Imagination
- For Better Or For Worse – Dehumanising Invisibility Versus Insecure Visibility
- Fun and Joy Are Very Powerful Political Forces
- Beyond Nostalgia – The Left Needs a Lasting Vision Our Lost Society Can Latch On To
- ‘Hope for Cynics’ (and Everyone Else)
- How the Light Gets In
- ‘History is Not History When It Is Happening’
- How Britain Political-Media Machine Enabled Slaughter in Gaza
- Nathan Gill Sentenced: The Tip of the Iceberg of Russia’s European Interference
- Is Nigel Farage a Changed Man?
- Normalise as a Neighbourly Concern
- The ‘Pink Ladies’ Laundering Anti-Migrant Views Into the Mainstream
- On the Record – The Truth About Nigel
- Dinner with Mr Brexit
- Jeffrey Epstein: Steve Bannon’s ‘Mr Fixer’
- How Luxury Lost Its Lustre
- ‘Made In Britain’: A Crafted Future?
- The Covid Inquiry – 230,000 Deaths and the ‘Calculated Silence’ of the Medical Establishment
- Notes on Now – Berger Lives On
- Mandrake – Vacant Chair
- Letters – January 2026
- Zeitgeisters – Caspar Henderson
- Puzzle Solutions – Edition 81
- The Upside Down – Small is Beautiful
FREE FROM FEAR OR FAVOUR
Edition 81 – January 2026
In This Edition
In This EditionHighlights
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‘Lies’ and the Lobby
The Socially Exclusive World of Political Journalism that Continues to Distort the National News Agenda
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Fun and Joy Are Very Powerful Political Forces
In the turbulence of the post-2008 financial crisis period, in the UK and the US, there was the emergence of a range of political figures who previously would have been nowhere near formal politics.
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Beyond Nostalgia – The Left Needs a Lasting Vision Our Lost Society Can Latch On To
James Bloodworth explores how and why the left abandoned its previous capacity to imagine the future – a vacuum into which the populist right has readily stepped
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‘History is Not History When It Is Happening’
Mainstream history rarely tells us what we actually want to know about the past; what it felt like to be there. It may give us facts, but it stops short of situating us imaginatively in the past.
Investigations, Analysis, Reports and Columns
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Editorial – Sanctuary
-
Peter Oborne’s Diary – A Dangerous Sponsor
-
News In Brief – Cryptic Comments
-
That’s True Too – In Pursuit of Pluralism – Imagining the Possibilities
-
A Red Top Christmas Carol
-
For Better Or For Worse – A Boring, Violent Life
-
For Better Or For Worse – The Fallacy of the Mean
-
For Better Or For Worse – Reclaiming a Social Imagination
-
For Better Or For Worse – Dehumanising Invisibility Versus Insecure Visibility
-
‘Hope for Cynics’ (and Everyone Else)
-
How the Light Gets In
-
How Britain Political-Media Machine Enabled Slaughter in Gaza
-
Nathan Gill Sentenced: The Tip of the Iceberg of Russia’s European Interference
-
Is Nigel Farage a Changed Man?
-
Normalise as a Neighbourly Concern
-
The ‘Pink Ladies’ Laundering Anti-Migrant Views Into the Mainstream
-
On the Record – The Truth About Nigel
-
Dinner with Mr Brexit
-
Jeffrey Epstein: Steve Bannon’s ‘Mr Fixer’
-
‘Made In Britain’: A Crafted Future?
-
The Covid Inquiry – 230,000 Deaths and the ‘Calculated Silence’ of the Medical Establishment
-
Notes on Now – Berger Lives On
-
Mandrake – Vacant Chair
-
Letters – January 2026
-
Zeitgeisters – Caspar Henderson
-
Puzzle Solutions – Edition 81
-
The Upside Down – Small is Beautiful