Ian Birrell

Ian Birrell is an award-winning foreign reporter and columnist. He is also the founder, with Damon Albarn, of Africa Express.

@ianbirrell

Javier Milei: Argentina’s Darwinian disruptor

07 Dec 2024

Why Germany is stuck in the slow lane

20 Oct 2024

MrBeast’s faux philanthropy

04 Oct 2024

The Iron Lady who could save Venezuela

26 Jul 2024

‘I was offered assisted dying over cancer treatment’

30 May 2024

The children killed by fentanyl

13 Mar 2024

How Edinburgh University stifled my investigation

19 Jan 2024

The African village mining Bitcoin

05 Jan 2024

How to escape North Korea

21 Nov 2023

Will Russia win Slovakia’s election?

28 Sep 2023

My night out with the Proud Boys

19 Sep 2023

What prisons teach us about democracy

04 Sep 2023

The secret messages behind the lab-leak cover-up

28 Jul 2023

South Africa isn’t neutral on Ukraine

07 Jun 2023

Why did Peter Daszak change his mind?

12 Apr 2023

The real Covid conspiracy

11 Mar 2023

How the UK sacrificed its car industry

15 Feb 2023

Why would anyone envy the NHS?

18 Jan 2023

Sam Bankman-Fried’s elitist altruism

23 Nov 2022

Inside Britain’s psychiatric nightmare

02 Aug 2022

Even McDonald’s couldn’t save Russia

17 May 2022

Putin’s grand plan is failing

04 Feb 2022

How China made Covid worse

09 Dec 2021

Andrew Mitchell’s friends in Rwanda

02 Dec 2021

The corruption of Britain

05 Oct 2021

Is this proof of lab leak lies?

10 Sep 2021

Science journals have been corrupted by China

13 Aug 2021

Britain’s criminal approach to drugs

30 Jul 2021

Did scientists stifle the lab-leak theory?

22 Jul 2021

Why won’t The Lancet admit it was wrong? The journal is doubling down on its rejection of the lab leak hypothesis

06 Jul 2021

What’s killing New Orleans?

05 Jul 2021

One question Sir Patrick Vallance still needs to answer Did he play a role in stifling debate on the origins of the pandemic?

21 Jun 2021

Beijing’s useful idiots

08 Jun 2021

What a Wuhan lab leak would really mean

26 May 2021

Is Labour dead?

07 May 2021

The Covid dissidents taking on China

13 Apr 2021

The dangerous naivety of Green anti-vaxxers

15 Mar 2021

A national newspaper gives a pulpit to a bloodstained dictator Baron Lebedev has recast Rwanda's president as an environmental hero

03 Mar 2021

The dictator who fooled us

23 Feb 2021

President Xi will never accept defeat

16 Feb 2021

The WHO’s Covid shame

10 Feb 2021

Bobi Wine and the battle for Uganda

14 Jan 2021

How Finland became a Covid success

07 Dec 2020

The toxic British worship of the NHS

02 Dec 2020

Has America changed its mind about drugs?

12 Nov 2020

The casual corrosion of democracy

05 Nov 2020

What’s the mood in Trumpland?

03 Nov 2020

The death of the music industry

12 Oct 2020

The BBC needs to sack the suits

18 Sep 2020

Africa’s catastrophic Covid response

11 Sep 2020

The older workers condemned by Covid

21 Aug 2020

How Covid exposed the world’s lack of care

14 Aug 2020

Where have all the good politicians gone?

01 Jul 2020

The defector taking on Kim Jong-un

19 Jun 2020

So where did Covid come from?

12 Jun 2020

The Republican Party’s descent into darkness

04 Jun 2020

Boris Johnson and the ravages of office

13 May 2020

How China is exploiting pandemic panic

30 Apr 2020

Britain doesn’t care about social care

22 Apr 2020

Covid-19 will expose Africa’s tyrants

09 Apr 2020

The WHO has failed us again

01 Apr 2020

China is not the hero in this darkest hour

23 Mar 2020

Mexico’s bloody drugs struggle

16 Mar 2020

Where the American Dream goes to die

02 Mar 2020

Boris must be bold: it could save lives

21 Jan 2020

Why are we locking up patients for profit?

15 Jan 2020

How would you respond to the rise of Nazism?

03 Jan 2020

How my daughter disrupted my politics

31 Dec 2019

2017: when the US woke up to its drugs shame

26 Dec 2019

Can Dominic Raab cling on to Esher?

09 Dec 2019

Our prisons are a national disgrace

02 Dec 2019

Spain’s election pain: six reasons to care

12 Nov 2019

How my daughter disrupted my politics

15 Oct 2019

How desperate is Doncaster for Brexit?

27 Sep 2019

Have we forgotten Syria?

20 Sep 2019

Capitalism needs more heroes

23 Aug 2019

How our first Asian MP shaped the Brexit debate

25 Jul 2019

Our scandalous disregard for disability

18 Jun 2019

How football raised its game

10 May 2019

Why the Iron Lady is an icon for our times

03 May 2019

The Arab Spring is still unfurling

11 Apr 2019

La OMS nos ha fallado nuevamente

01 Apr 2019

Can we be trusted with euthanasia?

01 Feb 2019

The invisibility of disability on screen

10 Jan 2019

How charities are corrupted by Whitehall

30 Nov 2018

Can Zuckerberg control his monster?

19 Nov 2018

The charity guru who duped the world

24 Oct 2018

Analogue dictators are no match for digital detectives

28 Sep 2018

Adventures in Trumpland

14 Sep 2018

The far right’s plans to capture Europe

06 Aug 2018

The dark genius behind the destructive creed of Putinism

26 Jul 2018

Why a historic African peace deal is good news for Europe

13 Jul 2018

In defence of the Fourth Estate

29 Jun 2018

A new party could save politics from the extremes

06 Jun 2018

How digital dissidents are defying the despots

25 May 2018

When will politicians quit the war on drugs?

16 May 2018

Slaying dragons: the stifling British green belt

24 Apr 2018

All hail the capitalism revolution on the streets of Paris

12 Apr 2018

Why you can’t rely on the news media to understand… Europe

16 Mar 2018