Western nations are belatedly re-evaluating their economic relationships and political alliances in the light of Vladimir Putin’s epic act of cultural and geopolitical vandalism. But the recent decision by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) to slash oil production ahead of the winter shows that this great reset of Western thinking cannot be confined […]
What a difference a decade makes. When David Cameron entered Downing Street for the first time in 2010, Russia seemed like a mere nuisance on the edge of Europe, the Arab Spring had not yet rocked the Middle East, and boosting relations with China was seen as the future. The UK was still a member […]
Australia has very, very unusual voting arrangements. That’s why the realignment that political historian Stephen Davies has documented throughout Western Europe, the UK, Brazil, and the US hadn’t happened there — until last Saturday’s Federal election. And even though it’s now possible to see familiar parts moving into place, Australia’s realignment has taken a somewhat […]
Kremlin-backed hackers have long been using Ukraine as a Petri dish for cyberwar experiments. Now, as tensions on the borders are escalating, we must prepare not just for a military incursion, but for a whole new form of hybrid warfare. We need only look at the 2017 Russian state-sponsored ‘NotPetya‘ virus that caused more than […]
Even for an Australian here in Melbourne, the Novak Djokovic saga has been bizarre, chaotic and Kafkaesque but also somehow uniquely Australian – with our Prime Minister leaping, Steve Irwin-like, into direct conflict with one of the world’s most high-profile vaccine objectors. And he lost. Here’s a recapitulation of events for those unfamiliar with the […]
For the first time in many years, we have a Foreign Secretary who has laid out a clear narrative for our foreign policy – and that narrative is ‘freedom’. Not since William Hague’s speech as Shadow Foreign Secretary 15 years ago, in which he pledged to put ‘human rights at the very heart of foreign […]
The latest G7 nation to have an election during a global pandemic has got a new government, and Canada is back to where it started. Provincial parties had triggered elections during the pandemic before and for some it had paid off. But it was always a bigger risk for the incumbent federal leader Justin Trudeau, […]
In freedom’s spring, after the collapse of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s, some western leaders’ consciences turned to thoughts of sharing more widely the gifts democracy had given us – free choice of governments, freedom of speech and the press, civil society, dispassionate justice and more. That part of humanity should […]
MPs will hopefully soon have the chance to vote on whether the UK should restore spending on foreign aid to the mandated level of 0.7% of GNI (gross national income). This is surely the right thing to do. First, the arguments in favour of cutting the target to 0.5% are weak. The Government’s case is […]
The National Education Union usually recoils in horror at every utterance that emerges from the Department for Education, but when Sir Kevan Collins was named as the Education Recovery Commissioner in February, even they conceded he was the right person for the job. In the snakepit of polarised factionalism that currently passes for educational ‘debate’ […]
On Saturday I attended a protest outside the Israeli embassy in Kensington, reluctantly disguised by my mandatory mask. I was disheartened, but far from surprised, to encounter many images, banners and audible chants expressing the most vicious anti-Semitism. Among them were countless aggressive cries of “From the River to the Sea,” a line straight from […]
During last week’s Commons debate on Xinjiang there was a curious mention of the environment. This was not some ham-fisted attempt to shoehorn in the fact that it was Earth Day, but rather a relevant warning to the British government that China could use the issue as leverage. Sir Iain Duncan Smith, who brought it […]
Who can possibly object to the restitution of objects to their lawful owners? No one doubts that after the Second World War Germany was right to restore stolen property to Jewish families or compensate them for its loss. In those circumstances, the identities of the Jewish wronged and the Nazi wrongdoers, and the relationships between […]
Georgia is the darling of the west in the Caucasus, but events in the last few days have brought into sharp relief fundamental issues that have been simmering beneath the surface for some time now. The sudden resignation of the Prime Minister, his replacement by Defence Minister Irakli Garibashvili, and the subsequent arrest of the […]
How should the British Government respond to the coup in Myanmar? Both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have condemned the military’s seizure of power from a civilian government holding a democratic mandate. The immediate priority for the UK government will be rightly ensuring the safety of UK citizens in the country. Once this […]
If there was any doubt before now, the actions of the Chinese Communist Party in 2020 have shown that it stands in opposition to members of the international community seeking to promote liberty, democracy, and the protection of human rights. From the cover-up of vital data in the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak, to […]
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