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Byline: John Kampfner IT WAS a classic peremptory gesture worthy of a tsar. Vladimir Putin's apparent announcement of an imminent pardon to one of his most important rivals speaks volumes [...]

Byline: John Kampfner There's virtually no aspect of our lives that hasn't been touched by the internet. Good, bad, ugly, inspirational: it has transformed the way we communicate. Given that [...]

Byline: JOHN KAMPFNER The nostalgic in me has loved the news coverage of recent days - the television footage of the wacky dictator acknowledging the synchronised clapping of the robotic [...]

Byline: John Kampfner I have sometimes wondered whether I should retrain as a psychologist. I would love to get inside the mind of one man: the man who took Britain [...]

Byline: John Kampfner Look back at the big events of the past decade and ask yourself: did we find out too much or too little of what the powerful did [...]

Byline: John Kampfner It was a question that had long dogged me – so much so that I decided to write a book about it. Why is it that people [...]

Byline: JOHN KAMPFNER Hatreds; rivalries; fisticuffs; character assassinations - whenever journalists wrote about the feuding inside the Labour government, they were denounced as liars or fantasists. Once Tony Blair and [...]

Byline: JOHN KAMPFNER It is the smell that hits you. I remember the first time I emerged from under the quizzical glances of the border guards at Friedrichstrasse station, to [...]

Byline: John Kampfner Was it a lack of courage that was the undoing of New Labour or an absence of purpose? As former ministers and advisers ponder the future, disorientated [...]

Byline: JOHN KAMPFNER If the task of Liberal Democrat leaders is to be noticed, this has been an impressive week for Nick Clegg. Commentators have been speculating wildly about where [...]

The warm air is already being blown into Downing Street. No matter how bad the recession gets, no matter what other troubles lie ahead, the ogre will soon be gone [...]

For all the drama of banks collapsing and stock markets plummeting, the world financial crash of 2008 is not a story of compelling pictures. Gordon Brown walking the corridors of [...]

RUSSIA would have attacked Georgia even if it was already in Nato, President Dmitry Medvedev said yesterday. In a three-hour meeting with journalists in Moscow, Mr Medvedev also insisted that [...]

RUSSIA'S relations with Britain will remain in deep freeze for as long as London harbours Russians violently opposed to the regime, Vladimir Putin said yesterday. In his first meeting with [...]

Is something extraordinary happening to ministers? Are they, if only in adversity, discovering the joys of candour? I posit the question, rather than state it as fact, because the form [...]

A Labour peer I encountered was in a bleak mood. I asked him which of the crises had affected him most - the loss of the local elections and the [...]

It has not been a habit of mine to heap praise on Charles Clarke. Indeed, it was not so long ago that he and I spectacularly fell out. Since then, [...]

In December 2003, as the Labour Party contemplated bringing Ken Livingstone back into the fold, Tony Blair let it be known that the congestion charge had been a 'successful policy''. [...]

Four years ago, as Tony Blair was hanging on to his premiership by his fingertips, I wrote a piece suggesting that perhaps, after all, Gordon Brown might not have what [...]

In nearly 30 years, one thing has not changed for Britain's Left. Margaret Thatcher remains the ogre she became when she entered Downing Street in 1979. I remember as a [...]

Nick Clegg achieved something remarkable during the denouement of the Euro-scrap in the Commons. The most pro-European party in Britain managed to draw attention from its two rivals, for all [...]

During the height of the war between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, a group of advisers and officials would meet at the armistice line. Sometimes it was the sandwich shop [...]

Lunchtime in Lisbon doesn't quite have the same glamour as Breakfast at Tiffany's. But at least in modern politics and diplomacy they sometimes try, and occasionally succeed. The EU Reform [...]

The sight of Gordon Brown apparently nodding off at Remembrance Day ceremonies could not have caught the mood of the Government better. He and his ministers are hardly out carousing [...]

Will he? Won't he? Gordon Brown will decide over the weekend whether to call a snap general election. He knows all the pros and cons. He and his people have [...]

Fresh from taking tea with the Iron Lady, Gordon Brown sets off for the seaside to spend breakfast, lunch and dinner in the company of a group of people he [...]

It is like a nagging toothache. It has dogged governments of all colours for the past two decades. The vexed question of Britain's place in Europe is now affecting Gordon [...]

In one fell swoop, Gordon Brown has reversed one of the most tawdry decisions taken by his predecessor. Tony Blair's infatuation with the gambling industry was incomprehensible. It confirmed a [...]

The small gestures mean so much when a Prime Minister takes over. Margaret Thatcher quoted St Francis of Assisi. Tony Blair waved to the cheering crowds, only for it to [...]

As Gordon Brown faces his first major continental challenge, even before he formally takes office, he would be advised to remind himself of recent political history. John Major and Tony [...]

Apart from the sight of pint-sized Hazel Blears standing alongside the giant figure of Hilary Benn, there was something else striking about Labour's wannabe deputy leaders, as they slogged it [...]

So Gordon Brown is Labour's new leader. As he 'humbly'' accepted the responsibility, there is only one reason why we all have to watch and wait for six more weeks: [...]

For a man who could have been an actor, it is not surprising that Tony Blair has sought to extract maximum suspense over his resignation announcement. We now know that [...]

It was a balmy Sunday night in June 1991. I heard loud music, and cheering, in the very heart of Moscow. It was coming from the back courtyard of the [...]

Politics and political journalists deal in truth, and half-truth, but also wishful thinking. So it has been most of the time with the David-Miliband-for-leader story. Barring a last-minute event of [...]

Not so long ago I was in Gordon Brown's Treasury meeting room, idling away a few moments waiting for him to come in. On a mantelpiece lay a picture of [...]

Tony Blair called it the 'fellowship''. He was returning from St Petersburg and his first meeting with Vladimir Putin. The new Russian president had wined and dined the British first [...]