One can almost feel sorry for Keir Starmer. It was not meant to be like this. Not that he will find the comparison gratifying, but there is a parallel with George W. Bush. Remember back: Bush Jr watched his father take centre stage on global affairs with a massive domestic approval rating. Then the domestics […]
In a move that is expected to widen the gap between the Armenian people and his disastrous leadership, Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has recently launched a series of attacks at the Armenian church, an institution that most Armenians around the world associate themselves with and care deeply about. On Friday 30 May 2025, Pashinyan […]
A group of us were trying to make sense of Donald Trump and discussing leadership and weakness. Why was Margaret Thatcher so great? I offered an answer. Uniquely among modern peacetime leaders, Thatcher had an agenda and knew what needed to be done. En route, she displayed more tactical subtlety than some of her most […]
The King and Queen of Canada have made it home to open the 45th Session of Parliament. While King Charles III is the Canadian head of state through the development of unique constitutional doctrines, he, of course, remains the British monarch. Their Majesties’ presence in Canada raises the question of where the long-standing relationship between […]
The human rights NGO sector is in crisis. The moral authority of human rights NGOs is collapsing – and it is authoritarian regimes that are reaping the rewards. Once seen as exemplars of morality on the world stage, many of these organisations are now adrift. They are haemorrhaging credibility not only in the West, but also […]
For transgressive teenagers of the middle 2000s, the film ‘South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut’ had everything. There were constant fart gags, an oracular clitoris and – the pièce de résistance – an abusive gay relationship between Saddam Hussein and the devil. But all of that is ultimately window dressing to a war that breaks […]
The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the US Congress – and in the American body politic writ large – to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners […]
The eagle-eyed among you might have noticed an acronym doing the rounds over the last few years: CANZUK. This is the name given to the idea of forming a close partnership between Canada (C), Australia (A), New Zealand (NZ) and the UK (you can work that one out). The modern CANZUK movement formed in the […]
Britain once ruled an empire where the sun never set, yet its lingering self-image as a leader rather than a learner has left it blind to the successes of nations it once governed or protected. According to the IMF’s 2024 World Economic Outlook, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates now surpass […]
In a video-call address to a summit being held in Kyiv on the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a further package of UK assistance to Ukraine accompanied by additional sanctions. He said the aim was to increase pressure on Vladimir Putin to make concessions in peace talks, declaring: Russia […]
Next year will be 20 years since we first published the ‘Bumper Book of Government Waste’. It put public spending under the spotlight, challenged Whitehall and local government to up their ante and encouraged people to hold ministers and budgetholders to better account. It won an Atlas Award in Washington DC in the process, for […]
For a government to ignore the unanimous will of an elected local council is a snub to the autonomy of local government, shows disdain for the will of the people and represents an insult to democracy. For a government to ignore the advice of its intelligence agencies represents a threat to national security. And for […]
With a healthy majority in Parliament, what’s stopping Britain’s Government from enacting the kind of sweeping policy changes we’re seeing in the United States? Michael Binyon from The Times and the National Review Institute’s Dominic Pino share their insights, plus: will tariffs force Putin’s hand in Ukraine? And how can we restore consumer optimism in […]
The United Nations celebrates its 80th anniversary this year. We have got used to it as part of the furniture of global diplomacy and come to assume it will always be with us. But the next four years could prove especially challenging for it. I wonder if it will survive a second term of Donald […]
When the Labour Government gleefully said in October last year that it had agreed with the Mauritian Government to hand over sovereignty of British Indian Ocean Territory and it was all a done deal, I knew that ministers were massively underestimating the fightback. Just nine days before they made the announcement, I had asked the […]
An earlier version of this essay was published in Discourse Magazine. The once-warm relationship between the United States and Canada has cooled in the past decade. But despite harsh rhetoric on both sides of the border these days, things are well positioned for a major reset. Indeed, the rightward shift in Washington and the coming move […]
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