Trumpism is here to stay
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson In the midst of a national and international crisis, a Republican presidential candidate lost to the man with the most votes in United States History, running on…
The Disunited States of America: can Biden save the US?
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson Biden’s winning has resulted in many Americans, and indeed many across the world, feeling cheerful and hopeful. Those who voted Democrat have at last, after four years,…
US election results : “I have frankly won. “We were winning everything”
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson For anyone who cares about the U.S Constitution, it appears like the ‘nightmare scenario’ is materializing. With results still coming in, Donald Trump is claiming victory. Even…
A Biden Presidency; a Political Cold War or the new Lyndon B. Johnson?
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson The date is 3rd March 2021. Exactly one year after his strong Super Tuesday showing performed political resuscitation on a previously floundering campaign, President Joe Biden reveals…
Why might Trump not want to win the election?
llustrations by Hannah Robinson Donald Trump is in trouble. He may have recovered from COVID-19, but his campaign is riddled with disease. Trump trails in some national polls by double digits….
What can we learn from the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg?
Illustration by Felix Pawlyn The recent death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg has exposed the lack of democracy at the heart of the US political system. Justice Ginsburg, who died in…
Presidential debates and Supreme Court nominations: the US election so far
llustrations by Hannah Robinson In boxing, a boxer who overreaches can usually expect to find himself on the canvas. The same tends to apply to politics. Throughout the US presidential campaign…
Is it time up for TikTok?
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson TikTok; the video-sharing app that no one can stop talking about and the app that will be responsible for making me fail university. It is addictive, and…
First Lady fashion: the accessories that reveal the stakes in this election
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson The countdown to November 3rd is on. In the midst of massive civil unrest and a raging pandemic still claiming more than one thousand lives a day,…
Will Trump become a tyrant?
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson It’s unusual to start an article with a caveat, but then these are unusual times. I’m not an Oracle but I still see no way that Donald…
#PublishingPaidMe and racial inequality in the publishing industry
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson Following the surge in the Black Lives Matter movement, calls for change across the world have been frequent and loud. However, you may be unfamiliar with the…
Can a safe choice help Biden win the “referendum” on Trump?
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson Due to many mail-in votes it seems unlikely that there will be a U.S Presidential election winner on November 3rd. I’ll go one further; there probably won’t…
The fashion industry continues to exclude and exploit black people
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson Diversity and representation within the fashion industry has been a longstanding subject of contention. In the last decade, this issue has gained traction, as consumers are increasingly…
From Dystopian YA fiction to Black Lives Matter; the evolution of the revolution
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson On Monday 1st June, President Trump stood outside Washington D.C.’s St John’s Church holding up a Bible; in a photo-op meant to show the strength and resilience…
Black Lives Matter: A cause that needs direction
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson The Black Lives Matter movement isn’t a new one, but the murder of George Floyd has once again thrust it to the fore and the video of…
Donald Trump is set for a one term presidency
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson Logic has been cast aside with bombastic disdain by Donald Trump, a populist outsider who confounds expectation. His opponents do not want to be made electorally foolish…
Prison Labour: the untold truth
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson Over the last few weeks, we have seen that the Black Lives Matter movement has hugely increased momentum and support. The ongoing protests, which were majority peaceful,…
Political bias and mistrust are corroding our democracy
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson Over time, political interest has grown but our trust in the system has markedly diminished. We’ve lost trust in traditional news channels and increasingly look to social…
Why I’m not expecting black people to talk about race
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson In her seminal work Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, Reni Eddo-Lodge conveys her frustration at her attempts to explain structural racism to…
Systemic racism: the true legacy of empire?
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson It is very easy to look across the pond to the United States, see the deep-rooted societal issues around race relations and say: ‘that is tragic, but…
COVID-19 poses a threat to abortion rights worldwide
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson Despite the claims that COVID-19 has become less lethal, there is growing evidence that we are only just starting to see the extent of collateral damage that…
Why does racism still underpin policing in the USA?
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson America’s original sin perpetuates. Like it or not, the notion of whiteness over blackness is enshrined within American history, and it still fundamentally underpins racial inequality in…
Instagram influencers are undermining activism
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson It has been almost three weeks since protests began following George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis. What has followed has been momentous. Protests have spread internationally in support…
Biden has to prove he is capable of making the promises of change a reality
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson Following George Floyd’s death, and the subsequent protest marches, the US has become even more divided– between those fighting for change, versus those fighting to sustain the…
America’s racist history – how we can make the future different?
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson Three weeks ago, I wrote an article commenting on how the fatal shooting of unarmed black jogger Ahmaud Arbery was symptomatic of a system which prioritizes the…
White silence is no longer an option
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson The murder of George Floyd has seen people across the world mobilise in acts of solidarity on an unprecedented scale. It has managed to create greater awareness…
The UK Government’s deafening silence is complicity of the highest order
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson On Sunday, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab decided to change the job description of one of the Great Offices of State, in order to appease a racist. When…
Complacency is complicity: black lives matter in the UK too
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson “Please I can’t breathe. My stomach hurts. My neck hurts. Everything hurts. They’re going to kill me.” GEORGE FLOYD, 2020. “I can’t breathe.” ERIC GARNER, 2014. People…
Beware the age of the Political Fool
Illustration by Hannah Robinson It is fashionable to label political eras. The last 60 years of American Presidency, for instance, is normally divided into imperial, imperilled and post-imperial segments. David Runciman,…
COVID-19: The End of the American Century
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson Donald Trump’s petulance on the global stage during this crisis has provided an open door for others to take control of global hegemony. The 45th President of…
Ahmaud Arbery’s story is more sombre proof of the reality of rights before lives
Illustration by Hannah Robinson On April 22nd, 1993, 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence was stabbed to death by white supremacists whilst waiting at a bus stop in South-East London. On the 28th April…
I Would’ve Voted for Trump in 2016 – But I Have Since Changed My Mind
To understand why America voted Trump, you need to understand the climate of 2016. Obama, the man that promised ‘Yes, we can!’ had broken a string of electoral promises. After…
Trump’s handling of this crisis exposes his shocking campaign tactics
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson President Trump’s daily press conferences are incomparable to anything politics has seen before. Topics range from him being number one on Facebook (for what nobody knows) anti-malarial…
Fake news hysteria can only lead to fake solutions
Illustration by Hannah Robinson Fake news has become an omnipresent aspect of politics around the globe. It appears that no election, referendum, or debate can happen without this ubiquitous term being…
Even in Black History Month black voices are marginalised
Scott Allen, Republican state senator for Wisconsin, ushered in the new year with a revised list for celebrating this Black History Month in America. The catch is that it consists,…
Iran vows “severe revenge”; but who will actually suffer?
Illustration by Hannah Robinson Following the death of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani the world has, quite frankly, gone into a spin. Three days into the new year and Trump is tweeting…
Unpredictable politics: Gordon Brown and Salman Rushdie on Brexit, Trump and turmoil
You might not think that the concerns of a former Prime Minister and a literary giant would have any notable similarities. But Gordon Brown and Salman Rushdie addressed themes with…
Alabama, Georgia, I refuse not to be heard
Many platforms, including the Broad, have published articles in the wake of the abortion laws passed in Alabama and Georgia. When deciding whether to write my own article on the…
We cannot ignore America’s war on the female body
Every single time abortion laws are tightened, women suffer. The lives of unborn bundles of cells are being put above the lives of living, breathing, human women, so we need…
Is a US-Russian alliance on the cards?
And no, I am not talking about the clientelist relationship between Donald J. Trump and Vladimir Putin. I am talking about an overt geostrategic alliance between the two largest countries…
The Columbine shootings marked a new kind of terror
20 April 1999. A pair of students, armed with semi-automatic rifles and homemade pipe bombs, walked into their high school in Littleton, Colorado and introduced the world to a new…
AUMF is America’s blank cheque for war
Since 2001, the United States has been engaged in the nebulous War on Terror, a war with no clarity nor end in sight. The legal justification for this forever-war is…
Boeing is going under and it’s taking Washington too
Boeing has been dealt a blow it will be recoiling from for some time. In just six months, its new 737 Max 8 model, the latest instalment to Boeing’s narrow-body…
What links Robin Williams and a Ukrainian presidential campaign?
Just over a decade ago, the late Robin Williams starred in a comedy called ‘Man of the Year’. In the movie, Wiliams plays a satirical talk show host who claims…
White people need re-educating about racism
There is this great fear over the word ‘racist’. Calling someone a racist – now that is just too far. It is often presented as over-dramatic name-calling, a means to…
North Korea needs to reform, but how?
Regime changes, from communism to capitalism, can take many shapes. In the best cases, we might see a peaceful transition into democracy in a way akin to the Velvet Revolution…
Trump’s shutdown is unnecessary and cruel
I found peace following a semester at war with homesickness. Once again able to drive around aimlessly, eat endless pits of Mexican food, catch up with family and friends, remind…
America has lost its grip on morality
I’ve had quite a few drawing room debates recently about whether Trump can reasonably be compared to Hitler. The more relaxed amongst us constantly reassure me that I’m overreacting to…
Microanalysing Ocasio-Cortez is judgemental and reductive
The US Midterms results a couple weeks back have ushered in a younger, more diverse demographic of congresspeople that will be descending on the House of Representatives come January. The…
The US can’t ignore the caravan, they helped cause it
On October 13th, in the city of San Pedro Sula in Honduras – the crime capital of the world for two years running – a caravan full of people desperate…
You can agree with a movement and disagree with its leaders
From Time’s Up, Black Lives Matter and March For Our Lives, this moment, dictated by dramatic political and social changes, is a crucial time for activism and represents a changing…
The Midterms’ firsts were inspirational and disappointing
After a long night anxiously watching midterms and aggressively drinking iced coffee from a massive reusable bottle that has a sticker with the fitting phrase “A woman’s place is in…
Trump must be held responsible for his fear mongering
When living abroad, news from home doesn’t seem to travel so fast. It may take days to hear of what the States’ administration is up to now, and it can…
Voter suppression shows how vital your vote is
The midterms are coming, and I’m preparing myself. While I refuse to become a pessimist, the memories of the 2016 election continuously force a heavy dose of reality down my…
Fighting fire with fire is the wrong reaction to Pittsburgh
In the aftermath of the cowardly, anti-Semitic attack on the Pittsburgh synagogue, there has been an outpouring of support for the Jewish community. A dark day in Pittsburgh history and…