Ian Birrell

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

@ianbirrell

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

How to escape North Korea

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

Will Russia win Slovakia’s election?

BY Ian Birrell / 8 mins

My night out with the Proud Boys

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

What prisons teach us about democracy

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

The secret messages behind the lab-leak cover-up

BY Ian Birrell / 9 mins

South Africa isn’t neutral on Ukraine

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

Why did Peter Daszak change his mind?

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

The real Covid conspiracy

BY Ian Birrell / 8 mins

How the UK sacrificed its car industry

BY Ian Birrell / 7 mins

Why would anyone envy the NHS?

BY Ian Birrell / 12 mins

Sam Bankman-Fried’s elitist altruism

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

Inside Britain’s psychiatric nightmare

BY Ian Birrell / 7 mins

Even McDonald’s couldn’t save Russia

BY Ian Birrell / 4 mins

Putin’s grand plan is failing

BY Ian Birrell / 7 mins

How China made Covid worse

BY Ian Birrell / 8 mins

Andrew Mitchell’s friends in Rwanda

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

The corruption of Britain

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

Is this proof of lab leak lies?

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

Science journals have been corrupted by China

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

Britain’s criminal approach to drugs

BY Ian Birrell / 7 mins

Did scientists stifle the lab-leak theory?

BY Ian Birrell / 10 mins

Why won’t The Lancet admit it was wrong?

BY Ian Birrell / 3 mins

What’s killing New Orleans?

BY Ian Birrell / 8 mins

One question Sir Patrick Vallance still needs to answer

BY Ian Birrell / 3 mins

Beijing’s useful idiots

BY Ian Birrell / 8 mins

What a Wuhan lab leak would really mean

BY Ian Birrell / 8 mins

Is Labour dead?

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

The Covid dissidents taking on China

BY Ian Birrell / 7 mins

The dangerous naivety of Green anti-vaxxers

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

A national newspaper gives a pulpit to a bloodstained dictator

BY Ian Birrell / 2 mins

The dictator who fooled us

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

President Xi will never accept defeat

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

The WHO’s Covid shame

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

Bobi Wine and the battle for Uganda

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

How Finland became a Covid success

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

The toxic British worship of the NHS

BY Ian Birrell / 7 mins

Has America changed its mind about drugs?

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

The casual corrosion of democracy

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

What’s the mood in Trumpland?

BY Ian Birrell / 9 mins

The death of the music industry

BY Ian Birrell / 8 mins

The BBC needs to sack the suits

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

Africa’s catastrophic Covid response

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

The older workers condemned by Covid

BY Ian Birrell / 7 mins

How Covid exposed the world’s lack of care

BY Ian Birrell / 7 mins

Where have all the good politicians gone?

BY Ian Birrell / 7 mins

The defector taking on Kim Jong-un

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

So where did Covid come from?

BY Ian Birrell / 9 mins

The Republican Party’s descent into darkness

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

Boris Johnson and the ravages of office

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

How China is exploiting pandemic panic

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

Britain doesn’t care about social care

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

Covid-19 will expose Africa’s tyrants

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

The WHO has failed us again

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

China is not the hero in this darkest hour

BY Ian Birrell / 9 mins

Mexico’s bloody drugs struggle

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

Where the American Dream goes to die

BY Ian Birrell / 9 mins

Boris must be bold: it could save lives

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

Why are we locking up patients for profit?

BY Ian Birrell / 8 mins

How would you respond to the rise of Nazism?

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

How my daughter disrupted my politics

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

2017: when the US woke up to its drugs shame

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

Can Dominic Raab cling on to Esher?

BY Ian Birrell / 9 mins

Our prisons are a national disgrace

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

Spain’s election pain: six reasons to care

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

How my daughter disrupted my politics

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

How desperate is Doncaster for Brexit?

BY Ian Birrell / 8 mins

Have we forgotten Syria?

BY Ian Birrell / 4 mins

Capitalism needs more heroes

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

How our first Asian MP shaped the Brexit debate

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

Our scandalous disregard for disability

BY Ian Birrell / 4 mins

How football raised its game

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

Why the Iron Lady is an icon for our times

BY Ian Birrell / 4 mins

The Arab Spring is still unfurling

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

La OMS nos ha fallado nuevamente

BY Ian Birrell / 7 mins

Can we be trusted with euthanasia?

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

The invisibility of disability on screen

BY Ian Birrell / 4 mins

How charities are corrupted by Whitehall

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

Can Zuckerberg control his monster?

BY Ian Birrell / 4 mins

The charity guru who duped the world

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

Analogue dictators are no match for digital detectives

BY Ian Birrell / 4 mins

Adventures in Trumpland

BY Ian Birrell / 8 mins

The far right’s plans to capture Europe

BY Ian Birrell / 4 mins

The dark genius behind the destructive creed of Putinism

BY Ian Birrell / 3 mins

Why a historic African peace deal is good news for Europe

BY Ian Birrell / 4 mins

In defence of the Fourth Estate

BY Ian Birrell / 4 mins

A new party could save politics from the extremes

BY Ian Birrell / 4 mins

How digital dissidents are defying the despots

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

When will politicians quit the war on drugs?

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

Slaying dragons: the stifling British green belt

BY Ian Birrell / 4 mins

All hail the capitalism revolution on the streets of Paris

BY Ian Birrell / 4 mins

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

BY Ian Birrell / 4 mins

Free Minds: Michael Clemens, a global thinker in a world filled with narrow-minded nationalism

BY Ian Birrell / 4 mins

Oxfam’s attack on fat cats might be more persuasive if its own bosses weren’t fat cats

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

CEOs are getting 120 times as much income as workers

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

Western aid undermines African democracy

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

It’s slow, overdue but it’s well underway. We’re on the path to the decriminalisation of drugs.

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

Animals. Are they so different from us?

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

Mark Zuckerberg hid millions from world governments. Should we now trust him to run one?

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

Catalonian separatists and Brexiteers share self-defeating stupidity

BY Ian Birrell / 4 mins

The gap between Trump’s manufactured promises and life in Middle America

BY Ian Birrell / 13 mins

The great survivor of European politics – Germany’s extreme pragmatist

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins

The even more deadly hurricane surging across America

BY Ian Birrell / 6 mins

Battles remain but progress on gay rights is now global

BY Ian Birrell / 5 mins