London

London’s New Police Chief: More of the Same?

Bernard Hogan-Howe may not have been anybody’s first choice to be the new head of London’s Metropolitan police, but the important thing is he was everyone’s last choice. Home Secretary Theresa May and London Mayor Boris Johnson on Monday announced that Hogan-Howe, who has been acting deputy commission for the last couple of …

A Week Later, the Battle to Understand England’s Riots Rages On

The French have a phrase for circumstances beyond control: “C’est la guerre,” literally “it’s the war.” They might say it, with a shrug, as they sit in traffic or wait for a bus that never arrives. But last week the expression, which dates back to World War II, took on a different inflection as residents of a village on the shores of …

Babylon’s Burning (Again!): Top 10 British Riot Songs of the Early ’80s

London’s streets have burned before, and not only during the Great Fire of 1666 or the Luftwaffe’s 1940 “Blitz”. The late 1970s saw England’s economy mired in recession, mass unemployment leaving youth alienated, angry and without hope. The streets burned with a continuous series of clashes between angry young people and authorities, …

What the London Riots Spell for the British Prime Minister


by Nick Assinder/London

After three nights of violence, arson and looting that have left parts of London looking like a war zone, Prime Minister David Cameron has one pressing question to answer from citizens looking to him for reassurance and action: Who controls Britain’s streets?

Throughout Monday night and the early hours …

Obama in London: All Hope and Glory, Signifying Nothing?

President Barack Obama — in a speech before the British parliament that drew approving nods rather than the aerobic repeat ovations that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had elicited on Capitol Hill a day earlier — sought to reassure Britons that the transatlantic relationship remains “special”. More importantly, he wanted …

Obama in the U.K.: Pomp and Circumstance, but What Does It Mean?

Not everyone welcomes the visit by the leader of the free world to London. There was the smartly dressed woman who found herself prevented from crossing Whitehall. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said. “Do I look like a terrorist?”

On the opposite side of the road, some 30 demonstrators protested for a different reason. At nearby Downing …

Obama: So Loved in Britain, He Might Consider Staying

The President was supposed to arrive for his two-day state visit to the U.K. on the morning of May 24. Instead, a plume of volcanic ash from Iceland forced a change of plan that saw POTUS curtail his trip to his ancestral homeland, Ireland, and head for London before Air Force One could be grounded. As officials scrambled to find him a …

‘Arm the Rebels’ Cry Reflects Western Desperation on Libya

Talk by U.S. and British leaders of the possibility of arming Libya’s rebels is a sign of desperation. After all, the amorphous rebellion appears to have little military organization, and Secretary of State Clinton admits that the allies “do not know as much as we would like to” about its makeup. Leaders of the Benghazi-based National …

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