As far as “world order” is concerned, the future may resemble the pre-modern past. The characteristic political institution of modernity is the nation-state. But before the era of European nation-states was inaugurated in Westphalia in 1648, Europe and much of …
Britain’s forgotten King of the North
Growing up in the Northumbrian village of Seaton Delaval, I lived in the shadow of the old aristocracy. The Delavals had hailed from Laval in the Loire valley, coming over with the Conqueror in the 11th century to settle the …
Covid has created a capitalist nightmare
Over the past two years, as the pandemic claimed the lives of millions of people and upturned the lives of everyone else, a silent revolution was taking place. Western capitalism suddenly found itself usurped; replaced by an even more oligarchic …