Mehdi Hasan

The Indy's John Rentoul sees a Palinesque streak in the editor of the Spectator.

Amusing.

UPDATE: My colleague Daniel Trilling points me in the direction of an out-and-out Sarah Palin/Tea Party supporter over at the Speccie - the one and only Melanie Phillips. Here's Mel's take:

The key point about Palin and the 'Tea-Party' movement is the challenge these are flinging down represent to the political establishment, Republican as well as ... read more

I haven't been able to bring myself to blog on the Iraq inquiry since last Friday, when we were all transfixed by Tony Blair's defiant and unrepentant testimony. Sir John Chilcot and his team of long-winded, deferential establishment worthies did a stunningly inept and incomplete job, allowing our former premier -- as is his nature -- to duck, weave, dodge, distort and evade.

I felt like throwing my remote control ... read more

I cannot tell you how much I laughed when I watched this video on the BBC's Daily Politics website (hat tip: Paul Waugh).

Tony Blair, former prime minister, ex-Labour leader, one-time political giant, has a new defender: the former king of daytime telly Richard "I'm not a poster boy for Tony Blair" Madeley, who says that Blair didn't lie about Iraq and that international law is "incredibly ... read more

I've blogged before about the BBC's unspoken, conservative and often right-wing biases and prejudices, and even written a feature in the magazine on the subject. Like me, Sunny Hundal at Liberal Conspiracy has also highlighted the myth of a liberal, left-wing, pro-Labour BBC.

In his most recent tirade against Auntie, on Comment is Free, Sunny takes on the BBC's odd coverage of the climate debate in a ... read more

Last night I took part in a discussion, on the BBC World Service, about the Nigerian poet and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka's outrageous comments on Britain and Islam.

In an interview with Tina Brown's Daily Beast, Soyinka joined a long line of leading literary and cultural figures (Martin Amis, V S Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Michel Houellebecq, etc) who push ill-informed, ignorant and often idiotic theories about Islam, Muslims and ... read more

Danny "I Am a Neocon" Finkelstein, of the Times, has a near-hysterical and rather paranoid rant about Iraq and Iran (lots of references to Munich, Churchill, the "risks of inaction", etc), which he concludes with a rhetorical question:

Can we sleep at night when a regime that executes dissidents is building a nuclear bomb?

The answer is, of course, "Yes." We already do. There is in existence on earth a ... read more

This is the kind of asylum story that doesn't make it on to the front page of the Mail or the Express. But today's Guardian has a shocking report about how UK border staff humiliate and trick asylum seekers and refuse difficult or complicated requests for asylum. The claims are made by a whistleblower, and have been taken up in parliament by the Liberal Democrats. From the ... read more

I support the wall. It is the Egyptians' sovereign right in their own country.

The Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas's comments, to the Guardian journalist Seumas Milne, on Egypt's decision to build an underground wall on the southern border of theblockaded Gaza Strip.

Is it any wonder then that so many Palestinians and Arabs consider Abbas to be a puppet of Israel, a "traitor" and even a "quisling"? How on ... read more

I have to admit that I have a soft spot for Denis MacShane, the Labour MP for Rotherham and former Foreign Office minister under Tony Blair. He is an unrelenting and articulate critic of Cameron's Conservatives and a passionate, opinionated and interesting politician.

Like me, he has criticised the BBC over the BNP, attacked David Cameron's alliance with Michal Kaminski, and helped expose the "cult of Cable". ... read more

Not long ago, the polls -- and the press -- were forecasting a landslide election victory for the Conservative Party under David Cameron. Back then, James and I predicted that "Labour may well still stand a fighting chance of a hung parliament at next year's general election".

We were pilloried for daring to express such an unconventional and unorthodox view. We've stuck to it -- to the displeasure ... read more

One of the quotes Sir Roderic Lyne has raised again and again at the Iraq inquiry is this claim, made by Tony Blair, in parliament, on 24 September 2002:

His weapons of mass destruction programme is active, detailed and growing.

What evidence or intelligence did the former premier have in his possession to suggest that the Iraqi WMD threat was "growing"? As Andrew Sparrow over at the Guardian live blog ... read more

Tony Blair has mentioned Abu Musab al-Zarqawi at the Chilcot inquiry. He referred to al-Zarqawi being based in Saddam's Iraq prior to the invasion in 2003.

So?

Terror experts agree that al-Zarqawi had no links to Osama Bin Laden at that stage, nor did he have any proven links to Saddam Hussein and his regime. Nor did the Jordanian terrorist formally merge his organisation with al-Qaeda, and pledge allegiance to Bin ... read more