President Donald Trump addressed his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin via social media last week, calling on him to settle now and stop the war in Ukraine or face increased sanctions. However, as the experience of his predecessor shows, this may be easier said than done. Can Trump deliver more effective sanctions than Joe Biden, and […]
When Labour came to power, some Ulster unionists believed that their problems with the Irish Sea border might start to ease. They hoped that Keir Starmer’s plans to ‘reset’ the UK’s relationship with the EU would make trade barriers between Great Britain and Northern Ireland increasingly redundant. So far, the Government has done almost nothing […]
After World War II, social democracy gradually became the reigning political and economic idea in Western Europe. Seen as a synthesis of different ideas that were opposed to the two extreme poles of fascism and communism, it attracted not just stalwart Labour politicians such as Dennis Healey, but also those on the Left of the […]
Health policy, and the politics of health, are two very different things. When Otto von Bismarck set about his mammoth social insurance reforms of the 1880s, he was motivated by one thing: politics. Specifically, he wanted to stifle and negate the allure of the Social Democrats, who had been steadily gaining support in the Reichstag. […]
A prominent European leader correctly identifies that EU states are lagging behind their global competitors. The reason? Low growth induced by piles of red tape imposed since the financial crisis. Sounds familiar, right? Except it’s not Liz Truss saying this, but Mario Draghi, former European Central Bank chief and ex-Prime Minister of Italy. Career technocrat […]
The Prime Minister is in Germany, his first visit to the country since taking office last month, and it is inevitably being billed as an opportunity to ‘reset’ the United Kingdom’s relations with Europe. Keir Starmer has met the Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz, four times already since 5 July, but this is a set-piece […]
The Ukrainian strike into Russian territory around Kursk, which began on 6 August, has been cause for cheer among those who support the right of Ukraine not just to defend its borders but to exist. By crossing into Russia in considerable force, the Ukrainian armed forces have changed the narrative of the war and unsettled […]
In Europe, we’ve seen the pattern again and again since 2015: Mass low-skilled immigration spurs a backlash The backlash strengthens nationalist parties, who then get 10, 20, 30 per cent of the seats in the legislature The normal political parties create a cordon sanitaire, some kind of promise not to do business with the baddies […]
When the exit poll for the French legislative elections dropped on Friday, there was widespread elation. Rassemblement National (RN), formerly the National Front (FN), had seemed poised after the first round to form the next government; instead, it was pushed into third place, behind a hard-left coalition – the New Popular Front (NPF) – and […]
Deep down, Emmanuel Macron always knew this day would come. ‘If we do not get a grip, whether it be in a few months, in five or ten years, the National Front will be in power,’ Macron wrote in his book ‘Revolution’, which came out a few months before he was elected president of France […]
This week, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that the impending delivery of General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft to Ukraine was a ‘purposeful provocation’ by the West. As some models of F-16 are technically capable of carrying tactical nuclear weapons, Russia has warned darkly that their deployment would push the conflict to ‘the […]
Russia is essentially a terror state. How else would you describe a state that is deliberately and consistently targeting populated residential areas with the intention of killing civilians? After all, my region of Odesa has been constantly targeted by Putin and his soldiers. Kyiv has also recently suffered under a massive rocket barrage of over […]
Political traditions often long outlive the context that created them. In Britain, every year the King gives his speech to parliament, in ancient Rome, the Senate solemnly assembled to select emperors picked by the Praetorian Guard, and last week in Russia, there were presidential elections. The result was not a surprise to anyone. According to […]
The conflict in Ukraine has been a wake-up call. Not only did it show again that Russia is an immediate military threat to its neighbours, but it revealed that defence spending can be eaten up very quickly when ice-cold relations become a hot war. Europe and the United States have acted to provide Ukraine with […]
On Thursday February 15, Alexei Navalny appeared via video link for a court hearing. Despite having spent three years in prison and over 300 days in solitary confinement he seemed in good spirits and elicited smiles from court officials by cracking jokes about the pay of federal judges. But just 24 hours later he was […]
The fall of the Berlin Wall was a formative political moment for a generation of liberty-lovers. As East and West Germans merrily smashed their way through the symbol of their division, liberal democracy and free-market capitalism seemed to have totally triumphed over authoritarian socialism. As the late great P.J. O’Rourke put it, a ‘huge totalitarian […]
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