Leading Articles
Leading article: Mr Brown submits his application for No 10

Published: 26 September 2006
Gordon Brown's speech to the Labour Party conference was not, despite all the advance billing, the speech of his life: it was nothing like the prime-ministerial tour de force he had delivered the year before
Leading article: The murderous fruits of neglect

Published: 26 September 2006
Safia Amajan was attempting to build a new, civilised Afghanistan as the director of the Ministry of Women's Affairs in Kandahar
Leading article: The political theatre transfers to Manchester

Published: 25 September 2006
Step back from the destructively febrile atmosphere of recent weeks and Labour should be staging the party's annual conference in reasonably good shape
Leading article: Union of unequals

Published: 25 September 2006
If all goes well, on 1 January Romania and Bulgaria will become the twenty fifth and twenty sixth members of the European Union, sooner than expected
Leading article: No! Sushi

Published: 25 September 2006
Hold those chopsticks! Put the soy sauce down. Move away from the sushi bar. For while you may think that your sushi lunch is just another toothsome example of modern Britain's culinary cultural revolution, others might well see you as an enemy of the planet.
Leading article: The tipping point

Published: 24 September 2006
Maybe, just maybe, we are about to reach the most crucial tipping point in the fight against global warming. Not the scientific one, where climate change escalates irreversibly out of control; with luck, we have some 10 years in which to avoid that, though - as Sir Richard Branson points out on page 13 today - we should all pray that we have not passed it already. But the political one where, at long last, the world wakes up to the unprecedented dangers we face and belatedly begins to take action.
Leading article: Ill-conceived adventures abroad that cost governments dear at home

Published: 23 September 2006
Leading article: Juvenile crime and punishment

Published: 23 September 2006
You can tell a lot about a society by the way it treats its children. In England and Wales the law says that a child is not capable of committing a criminal offence until they reach the age of 10. Before Labour came to power in 1997, there was a long-established legal presumption that a child under the age of 14 did not know the difference between right and wrong. This kept the prosecution of young people within sensible bounds, because a court had to be satisfied that it was in the interests of justice to convict the child.
Leading article: Freedom for the fries

Published: 23 September 2006
Having fully supported Jamie Oliver and his campaign to improve the school dinner, it is with great sadness that we must now sound a note of caution, doubt even. Not with the campaign itself. Who could doubt the efficacy of something that would have our little darlings tucking into green vegetables and fresh fruit in place of buns and fizzy drinks.
Leading article: A party learns to respect, if not love, its leader

Published: 22 September 2006
This was a good week for the Liberal Democrats; a better week, we venture to suggest, than either the leaders or delegates probably expected
Leading article: Money alone will not reduce truancy

Published: 22 September 2006
Truancy figures published yesterday show a rise in the rate of unauthorised absences, even though the Government has thrown more than £1bn at the problem
Leading article: Give women their rights - and raise a continent
Published: 21 September 2006
What's black and white and (RED) all over? We live in a world of increasing sophistication and interconnectedness in which the issues of international politics can seem dauntingly complex
Leading article: Damaging proof of instability

Published: 21 September 2006
The deposed Prime Minister of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra, arrived in London last night, the latest in a long line of enforced exiles to find at least a temporary haven in Britain
Leading article: A rude shock for a nation resting on its laurels

Published: 20 September 2006
Until approximately 48 hours ago, we had been accustomed to regarding Hungary as a well-organised small country with an exotic language, neatly tucked away in central Europe
Leading article: Better weather in Brighton

Published: 20 September 2006
The Liberal Democrats have not had a great deal to cheer about this year. But at their conference yesterday they moved forward on two fronts, adopting credible economic proposals and cheering a dignified Charles Kennedy
Leading article: Misplaced nostalgia for a more innocent age

Published: 19 September 2006
In recent days we have heard anxieties aired about the state of modern childhood. A sinister cocktail of junk food, marketing, over-competitive schooling and electronic entertainment is poisoning that most innocent of ages, a powerful lobby of experts said.
Leading article: Time for a thaw in the frozen conflicts

Published: 19 September 2006
Compared with the murderous conflicts being waged elsewhere in the world, the simmering dispute between Moldova and its breakaway region of Trans-Dniester might seem a mere note in the margin.
Leading article: Innovative policies in search of a leader

Published: 18 September 2006
The Liberal Democrats meet this week at a potentially decisive point in their history as the third force in British politics. Their conference sets key tests, both for the party itself and - critically - for its new leader, Sir Menzies Campbell.
Leading article: Religion and respect in the global village

Published: 18 September 2006
The notion that a single paragraph of a Papal address to a group of German academics would be winging its way around the world with potentially devastating consequences might once have been the stuff of fiction. But the episode of the Danish cartoons should have been a lesson.
Leading article: Colours on a plate

Published: 18 September 2006
In only one respect is a carrot like an elephant. It is very hard to describe, but you know one when you see it. And chiefly you know it is a carrot because it is orange.
Leading article: The Pope and the Prophet

Published: 17 September 2006
At first sight, the controversy over Pope Benedict XVI's remarks on Islam and violence appears to be following a similar course to last year's furore over the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed
Leading article: On your marks, please, Sir Menzies

Published: 17 September 2006
In the general election only last year, this newspaper advocated intelligent voting "to promote the values of environmental sustainability, social justice, human rights and the rule of international law"
Leading article: Mr Fry improves the mood of the nation

Published: 17 September 2006
Funny thing, progress. For many, the reaction to the mutation of manic depression into bipolar disorder is to scoff because it sounds as if it is something to do with earth science.
Leading article: Time to guard the shelves

Published: 17 September 2006
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The question of who will guard the guards is raised again by our revelation today that the Food Standards Agency has privately told food manufacturers and retailers that it will not stop them selling an illegal GM rice. The Agency has already, in its short life, done much to undermine public confidence in its competence and impartiality, taking a seemingly uncritical approach to GM food despite evidence of cause for concern. It has lost no opportunity to attack organic produce. Even a review of its own performance last year found the "vast majority" of its stakeholders considered it biased.
Leading article: Sudan must not be left to impose its own "final solution" on Darfur

Published: 16 September 2006