Beyond any shadow of a doubt, the dissolution of the Soviet Union into a number of independent nation states, and with it a transition within Russia from a fully centralised socialist economy to a capitalist one, was carried out appalling poorly. Simplifying the story for brevity’s sake, the immediate post-Soviet government, for all intents and […]
Okay, now the Brexiteer obsession with Italy is getting extremely irritating
Given this looks set to drag on for some time ahead, I will write this article here and now and then shut up about it. It is a Remainer trope that that the Brexiteers are on their last legs; that they see the dream dying and are wrapped up in an angry phase of denial […]
How Theresa May not promoting from within could lead to her downfall
Tom Tugendhat is giving a speech today about foreign policy. For those of you who do not know, Tugendhat is a Tory MP, elected at the 2015 general election. He is also chair of the Foreign Affairs select committee. It is a strange time for select committees in that they are staffed with a greater […]
We have tried “non-western intervention” in Syria already. It hasn’t worked
I’ll shut up about Syria in a second, I just have this one thing to get off my chest. Jeremy Corbyn and many others, since May first made her intention to join the US and France in bombing Assad chemical weapons targets inside of Syria known, have vocalised a view that goes like this: western […]
Here’s what I’ll say about Britain intervening in Syria in 2018
Back in 2012 and 2013, I shouted long and hard about how the West needed to militarily intervene in Syria. I figured if we didn’t, hundreds of thousands would die and five years later we’d still be seeing mass slaughter of human life inside of Syria. As someone who objected to the Iraq invasion, I […]
Yesterday’s session in the House shows why I’d still rather have Theresa May as prime minister over Jeremy Corbyn
I think it’s fair to say I’ve never been the greatest fan of Theresa May as PM. I have often ranted here about her failings as leader of the Conservative Party and of the country. I even dismissed her in the opening page of my last book as “crap”. However, if it came down to […]
Why Brexiteers finally turning against the Good Friday Agreement is so dangerous
On Friday, former NI-Secretary Owen Paterson tweeted “The collapse of power-sharing in Northern Ireland shows the Good Friday Agreement has outlived its use” with a link to a Daily Telegraph article written by Ruth Dudley Edwards. The crucial paragraph from the Edwards piece is the final one: “Realists believe the GFA has served its purpose […]
Why having no tariffs is as utopian having no immigration control whatsoever
Policy Exchange have released a report today entitled, Global Champion: the Case for Unilateral Free Trade. There are many good points raised in it. The paper reminds us that free trade is a good thing, for both rich and poor, and that a lot of the myths surrounding it are just that. “‘Food security’, for example, […]
Why the UN Jerusalem vote is bigger than you think it is – it shows us the future of America
Yesterday, the United Nations general assembly had a vote around the United States’ decision to formally recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by relocating its embassy there. It was a landslide victory for those countries who voted against America’s decision, with 128 countries voting to support the longstanding international consensus that who gets to […]
Yesterday was a national embarrasment of epic proportions – so why is the coverage of it so muted?
Let’s unpick what happened yesterday. The British prime minister travelled to Brussels to have lunch with the president of the European Commission, over which it was planned that they would finalise the wordings that would allow the trade talks between the UK and the EU to move to the next stage. The big issue that […]