Ian Birrell

London

Foreign Correspondent and Columnist at Freelance

Foreign correspondent, columnist, campaigner, co-founder @africaexpress, citizen of the world and a bit more besides...

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Articles

The world’s wealthiest dynasty is growing richer from Britain's SEND crisis

5 days ago | inews.co.uk | Ian Birrell

The al-Nahyan dynasty has ruled Abu Dhabi since the 18th century and is almost certainly the richest family in the world. It is headed by Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, whose nine children and two adopted daughters have been raised in a gilded world of astonishing opulence with glittering palaces and a fleet of private jets.
Inside secret Kharkiv where schools, bars and ballet are hidden underground

1 week ago | inews.co.uk | Ian Birrell

The school looks like so many others with its brightly-painted classrooms, clusters of chattering children and walls filled with colourful pictures drawn by pupils. When the headteacher shows me into one of the classrooms, a group of seven and eight-year-olds jump up in unison. Asked if they like their school, they chorus “yes” with some shy smiles before a bell rings and they rush off to another lesson. Yet this school, which opened less than a month ago, is highly abnormal.
The Tories are doomed - whoever is in charge

1 week ago | inews.co.uk | Ian Birrell

Here we go again. Another leader of the Conservatives is floundering, crushed by the job and haunted by their past. An ambitious rival stokes her pain, while Boris Johnson prowls around to remind people of his presence. The polls look disastrous. The public is not interested in anything they say. Threadbare policies expose a party bereft of confidence or ideas despite the cost of living concerns, a flailing economy, shattered public services and alarming global turbulence.
Why does this Government seem to dislike people with disabilities?

2 weeks ago | inews.co.uk | Ian Birrell

Sir Keir Starmer is having a torrid time in Downing Street as he grapples with a nightmare president in the White House, grinding war in Europe and the dreadful legacy left by his predecessors. His popularity has crashed to a record low – and latest YouGov polling shows that these dismal ratings are being driven by dismayed Labour voters, with half holding an unfavourable view of their prime minister.
Putin is toying with Trump - and he's falling for it

3 weeks ago | inews.co.uk | Ian Birrell

Donald Trump’s posts on social media have been a key tool in his fight to disrupt politics and redefine his country’s place in the world. His fusillade of impulsive and often impetuous tweets on first Twitter, and now also his own Truth Social platform, dominate headlines, shift markets and shatter diplomatic norms.
Reform is about to be put under the microscope - and it will crumble

1 month ago | inews.co.uk | Ian Birrell

Zia Yusuf, the chairman of Reform UK, has been busy in the media boasting about his party’s success in the local elections and calling for the “remoralisation of young people”. In one interview, he pointed to China and Russia as models for teaching a more patriotic version of British history in schools – two dictatorships that use their education systems to embed state propaganda with a distorted take on the past.
History will not be kind to Trump’s shameful sycophants

1 month ago | inews.co.uk | Ian Birrell

Barely two weeks after Donald Trump’s return to the White House, a Republican congresswoman called Anna Paulina Luna put forward legislation to carve his face on the famous Mount Rushmore memorial in South Dakota. “His remarkable accomplishments for our country, and the success he will continue to deliver, deserve the highest recognition,” she declared.
Don't count on Trump's volatility saving Ukraine

1 month ago | inews.co.uk | Ian Birrell

Certainly the picture was historic: two presidents, seated in simple chairs amid the magnificence of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, as they discussed the prospects of peace in Europe’s most devastating war for eight decades. The pair are a study in contrasts that goes far beyond appearance and style.
IAN BIRRELL: These attacks on Kyiv are proof Putin is emboldened by US appeasement

1 month ago | dailymail.co.uk | Ian Birrell

It's 11 years since I watched Russian troops stripped of military insignia seize Ukrainian army bases in Crimea, while their president, Vladimir Putin, publicly denied that any of his forces had crossed the border. ‘We feel so helpless,’ one teacher told me with tears in her eyes as thuggish armed groups prowled the streets. ‘Our rights are violated, our children threatened with guns and there is nothing we can say or do about it.’She was right, sadly.
I was brutally raped by the man I'd been forced to marry to save my mother. And that was just the start of the horror: A survivor reveals the chilling truth about gang rape and torture in China's death camps | Daily Mail Online

1 month ago | dailymail.co.uk | Ian Birrell

For brides around the world, their wedding day is meant to be a magic moment, often filled with family, friends and fond memories. But for Gul, then a 23-year-old model in Shanghai, it was among the darkest of days. ‘When I had the wedding, it felt like a funeral to me; and when I signed the marriage certificate, it felt like I was signing my death certificate,’ she told me. ‘I did not wear the dress. I did not receive greetings from family members. I did not say anything to my friends.