Matt Withers

London

Journalist at The New European

Journalist, broadcaster, podcast producer, trainer, comic of a sort

Articles

The hidden war crime

2 weeks ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | Matt Withers

That the UK’s first major exhibition dedicated to highlighting sexual violence in conflict is only opening in 2025 seems like an aberration, until the exhibition itself reminds the viewer that, historically, it has been either overlooked or dismissed as an inevitable by-product of war. Although, at the end of the second world war, evidence of widespread sexual violence was presented at both the Nuremberg and Tokyo War Crimes tribunals, no formal charges were filed.
PMQs Review: U-turn if you want, the lady's not listening

2 weeks ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | Matt Withers

In 1997, then Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman famously asked home secretary Michael Howard the same question 12 times in an interview. Evaded over and over again on a point central to a scandal which has long since been forgotten, the rottweiler repeated, “Did you threaten to overrule him?” while Howard found various artful ways to avoid confirming or denying the threat.
PMQs review: Is Kemi Badenoch getting her strategy from the Two Ronnies?

1 month ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | Matt Withers

It is with some regret that we must inform you there is now another Brandreth popping up on BBC TV, talking rubbish in exchange for attention and perhaps the occasional chuckle. This one, however, is not Gyles – novelty knitwear wearer, former Tory MP and whip, now seen on The One Show interviewing the sort of people who’ve been using the same iron for 65 years. The new Brandreth is his daughter, the splendidly-named Aphra, who was elected Conservative MP for Chester South and Eddisbury last year.
PMQs review: Keir Starmer actually makes a good joke shock

1 month ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | Matt Withers

It has happened! It has arrived! Finally. The day they said would never come!22,886 days since he was born, 3,646 days since becoming an MP, 1,852 since becoming leader of the Labour Party and 299 since becoming prime minister, Keir Starmer made a joke. An actual, proper, funny, laugh-out-loud joke at Prime Minister’s Questions.
PMQs: Shock as Badenoch achieves the unthinkable

1 month ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | Matt Withers

After the Supreme Court ruling on the legal status of a woman, there was one question which was destined to dominate prime minister’s questions today, and so it proved: does the government agree that the legal definition of a woman should be based on biological sex? It should be a simple yes-no question, but ironically it’s less binary than that and there is a third response: that you welcome the ruling and it brings clarity.
PMQs, haunted by the political ghost of David Cameron

2 months ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | Matt Withers

David Cameron’s post-prime ministerial career, it is fair to say, probably hasn’t lived up to his expectations. First he tried to make a few quid in the banking world, to keep up with his Chipping Norton neighbours who went straight into hedge fund management from university. That ended in ignominy as it emerged Cameron been texting the then chancellor to secure his new employer access to a financing facility scheme during the Covid crisis.
PMQs Review: A dangerous question for Keir Starmer

2 months ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | Matt Withers

There comes a point for every prime minister when the most dangerous questions come not from the side opposite but from behind. When the awkward questioning comes from the PM’s own benches, it’s a sign the honeymoon is over. While Keir Starmer has not really had much of a honeymoon – his relationship with the British public being less of a betrothal and more a one-night stand which got weirdly out of hand – it’s very much back home now.
PMQs Review: It was all going so well for Kemi Badenoch

Mar 5, 2025 | theneweuropean.co.uk | Matt Withers

Once upon a time, not that long ago, Labour prime ministers opened pretty much every session of PMQs with a list of those British soldiers who had lost their lives in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan in the preceding seven days. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen any more, but there was a reminder of it today when Keir Starmer opened an understandably subdued prime minister’s questions with a sombre tone.
Neil Kinnock: ‘Trump is like all bullies... he needs a bump on the nose’

Feb 25, 2025 | theneweuropean.co.uk | Matt Withers

Neil Kinnock, Labour leader from 1983 to 1992 and now honorary president of the party’s Movement for Europe group, is unequivocal about where he stands on Britain’s future relationship with the EU. “Oh, I think the rational argument is to seek to rejoin,” he says, as we sit in his bijou – or broom cupboard-like – office in the House of Lords. “Unfortunately, it would be absurd to try to put a date on it.” He stops.
This car crash was Kemi Badenoch's worst PMQs yet

Feb 12, 2025 | theneweuropean.co.uk | Matt Withers

Until the start of 2023, the BBC ran a nightly paper review on its news channel, in which a pair of journalists went through the next day’s newspapers and the stories on their front pages. Now it’s been brought back, in a way, except that it’s on a Wednesday lunchtime, the guest is Kemi Badenoch, the papers are a day or two old and they are exclusively the Daily Mail and Telegraph.