“Everything has changed,” Keir Starmer warned us only a few weeks ago, noting how Donald Trump’s re-election is reordering the globe. And yet somehow, even after “Liberation Day”, everything in Britain has stayed the same. Austerity is back, just with …
Will Marine Le Pen become a martyr?
With Marine Le Pen’s conviction for embezzlement on Monday, France has become the latest country to have a national political campaign take a detour into the law courts. In the USA, the first phase of last year’s presidential election centred …
The EU thrives on fear
Mild feelings of panic were induced across the European Union last week, as citizens were urged to prepare for impending disaster. Stock your cupboards! Draft emergency plans! No, it’s not the opening of a mediocre dystopian novel — it’s the …
Can Carna cope with immigration?
In 1905, the Irish language activist Patrick Pearse, not yet a revolutionary, bought land in Connemara, in Ireland’s Irish-speaking far West, where he built a thatched cottage in traditional Irish style. Poor and remote, the wind-lashed bogs and rocky hillsides …
Germany isn’t ready to fight
“Germany is back,” Friedrich Merz victoriously declared, fresh off securing a historic deal to boost military spending. Once, such a statement might have sent shudders across Europe. Now, it brings cautious relief. With the postwar order in disarray, London, Paris …
Europe needs a battle plan
Europe is appalled. Donald Trump has delivered a wake-up call that it cannot ignore. We have long been in denial about the state of our relationship with America, knowing about our dependency, but have done nothing to correct it. This …
Who is preventing peace in Ukraine?
Odesa’s historic city centre remains under daily Russian bombardment. Each night, we wake to news of yet another drone or missile attack. But so far the air defences, like Ukraine, hold out. And the yellow and blue flags fly defiantly …
Can Spain forgive Juan Carlos?
If you ever struggle to adapt to the modern world, spare a thought for Juan Carlos, the disgraced Emeritus King of Spain. On a rare return to Spain from the United Arab Emirates — where he currently resides in semi-exile …
Is Poland’s far-Right unstoppable?
In February 2022, I witnessed something remarkable. As Ukraine fell into war, and millions of refugees fled the fighting, Poland banded together to come to their aid. Warsaw’s Central Station became a refugee shelter overnight, with throngs of aid workers …
Why Europe can’t defend itself
Imagine a world in which western Europe was actually able to stick it to Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump simultaneously. As if. Back in the real world, there’s a remote possibility the Europeans might get their act together sufficiently to …
Erdoğan’s new world order
Celebrating the Turkish centennial, in 2023, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan unveiled an outsized vision of his country’s future. The “Century of Turkey” would have his country playing a far more autonomous, assertive role. “The international community will see a Turkey …
How rearmament can make us rich
On May 1, 1954, for its May Day air show, the Soviet Air Force flew a pair of four-engined Myasishchev-4 jet bombers over Red Square. With their ultra-modern lines, and dimensions large enough to suggest a sufficient range to reach …
Is civil war coming for France?
Today marks the moment, 63 years ago, that France finally ceded control of Algeria. But speak to many in both countries and the war might have finished yesterday, with tensions between Paris and Algiers now higher than they’ve been for …
Rearmament is a noble lie
In Oracles, Magic and Witchcraft Among the Azande, one of the seminal texts of British social anthropology, E.E. Evans-Pritchard used the example of a granary which suddenly collapses, killing an unfortunate Zande tribesman, to elucidate the difference between magical and …
Europe’s great delusion
Wars, it is said, make people conservative, since they are fought for an idea of home under threat. And yet their innate tragedy is that, even in victory, they usher in a world transformed. We are seeing this revolutionary fable …
