Was it Theresa May who broke the taboo? In April 2016, in her only public speech during the Brexit referendum campaign, the then Home Secretary reluctantly concluded that the UK should remain in the EU, but leave the European Convention …
Ukraine has exposed the EU’s nationalism
Over the past decade, and especially since the political shocks of 2016, there has been an increasing tendency to see both domestic and international politics in terms of a set of binary opposites: democracy and authoritarianism, liberalism and illiberalism, internationalism …
The Ukraine war is about to get worse
Amid the never-ending coverage of the latest offensive or counteroffensive in Ukraine, it is often unappreciated just how much worse the global economic repercussions from the conflict could have been. Russia is the world’s leading exporter of gas and provided …
The populist Right are fake revolutionaries
Predictions that the pandemic would spell the end of populism and thrust voters back into the political mainstream have turned out to be little more than wishful thinking. In the US, polls show Trump creeping up on Biden. In Europe, …
Britain is Europe’s liberal outcast
When Labour wins the next election, Britain will assume a role in Europe something akin to the indomitable Gaulish village in Asterix: the last holdout of liberal-Left political power in a continent swinging firmly to the Right. Yet for a …
At Nato, America recaptured Europe
It is now clear that the Russian invasion of Ukraine marked the end of one era in world politics and the beginning of a new one. As with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the collapse of détente …
Why Britain can’t control inflation
“We are living in an expensive and increasingly poor country,” thundered The Guardian‘s political editor, furious at the crumbling state of the nation unable to pay its workers properly. “It is not much use lecturing people about paying themselves more …
Brexit has stumped our zombie elites
Sometime very early in the morning of 24 June 2016, I woke up, as middle-aged men tend to do. I looked at my phone to see the result. My only thought was: “Fuck, that’s a lot of work.” Then I …
The new world war on free speech
The war on free speech is hardly a novel phenomenon, instead mutating over the centuries. What is new, however, is its global aspirations: today, the conflict takes the form of a world war.
You can see its shadow in every …
The Left was blinded by Berlusconi
In 1994, when Berlusconi launched his political party Forza Italia, I was 12 years old. At the time, the last thing I was interested in was politics, and yet Il Cavaliere, as he was known, soon became a part of …
Britain can thrive as a vassal state
Disgruntled Remainers still furious about Brexit are beginning to morph into the very thing they have long accused their opponents of being: creatures trapped in nostalgic visions of a world that never existed. This strange transformation has been on full …
The capitalists are revolting over China
After marshalling Europe in its proxy war against Russia, America is now determined to repeat this success against China. Here, the consequences for Europe could be even more significant than the economic shock of the past year. Yet, despite a …
How America weaponised the West
In the month that has passed since Emmanuel Macron issued his call for greater European strategic autonomy, two rival camps have gone to battle over its legacy. The first is populated by Atlanticists such as European Commission president Ursula von …
The end of Germany’s open borders
Wir schaffen das! Who could forget Angela Merkel’s one-liner on August 31, 2015 — best translated as “Yes, we can!” — after she opened her country’s borders to hundreds of thousands of migrants making their way from Syria, Afghanistan and …
The rise of Europe’s military austerity
First came the pandemic recession, caused by the decision to shut down entire societies via lockdowns; then came the largest energy and commodity shock in 50 years, caused by the decision to sanction Europe’s largest supplier of gas to the …