The curse of finance ministers whose country’s business model is broken is that they are powerless to transform the economy, yet too powerful not to take the blame. But when the economy is merely stagnating, not yet in free-fall, preventing …
Trump can’t end Mexico’s cartel war
Most residents in the town of Jerécuaro in Central Mexico were asleep when the car bomb exploded in the plaza at 5.10 am on 24 October, blowing out the windows of stores and scattering debris. But when a second car …
Britain’s post-imperial delusion
I only salvaged a few objects from my late dad’s home when it was cleared. But these included two that could be said to bookend his era of British history. The first was a barometer, presented to a Harrington ancestor …
The cruelty of ‘corridor care’
This week, while carrying out a SITREP or situation report in hospital, I came across a 93-year-old woman lying on a trolley in a corridor. Tailgating her was a 94-year-old man, also on a trolley, also suffering from a terminal …
Hezbollah’s options are running out
Joseph Khalil Aoun. He’s mostly unknown outside his native Lebanon, but is already helping transform the Middle East. Having previously served as the head of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), the new Lebanese President has been quick to make his …
The far-Right is coming for Farage
Nigel Farage is a study in contrasts. He’s the Dulwich College-educated former investment commodities broker who has defined his political career in opposition to the establishment. A Thatcherite disciple, his project is the ruin of her party. And, for a …
Why Europe fears free speech
We all know the old joke: when a European referendum delivers the “wrong” outcome, the country votes again until they get it “right”. The EU thought this would be the case after Brexit. But so far, no one’s laughing.
If …
Wildfires don’t care about DEI
In a fight between a good big man and a good little man, the good big man will generally prevail. In a straight-up shootout, a small female police officer is the equal of a large male predator. But police use …
Is Elon the new Enoch?
In the opening of E. H. Gombrich’s A Little History of the World, there’s a lovely metaphor of the work of an historian. History, he writes, is like a bottomless well stretching into eternity, visible only by human recollection falling …
Annexation has always haunted Canada
“It is her own soul that Canada risks today.” Rudyard Kipling’s cable to a Montreal newspaper was an explosive intervention in the country’s 1911 election, which turned on a familiar question: should Canadians submit to the “economic force” of the …
Why Iran needs foreign journalists
It doesn’t make much difference if it was hostage diplomacy or old-school press trampling — or, as now seems clear, the tit-for-tat response to the detention of an Iranian in Italy. He, it turns out, was accused of supplying drone …
Is Trump the most libertarian president ever?
It’s unusual to have a single figure, Donald Trump, dominate the political life of a country for a decade — and for nobody, really, to have any clear definition of his core political philosophy. For much of that decade, Democrats …
Trump’s return to the Monroe Doctrine
With just over a week to go to his inauguration, Donald Trump is already sabre-rattling. It is, he said, an “absolute necessity” that America annexes Greenland. “People really don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it, but …
Elon Musk: neo-feudal prince
In a surreal cascade of events, the internet personality Andrew Tate has launched a political party. He has done this seemingly in response to a resurgence of interest in the scandal of Britain’s predominantly Pakistani Muslim “grooming gangs”, as these …
Trump is starting an oil war
Has Donald Trump been reading Don Quixote? Last week, the incoming President warned the UK that it was making “a very big mistake” by raising tax on North Sea oil. His solution? “Get rid of windmills.”
It was classic Trump, …