George Parker has a mordant sense of humour (“The aristocrats at the heart of British democracy”, FT Magazine, November 13). When I was the EU’s chief election observer in Indonesia in 2004, I was charged with explaining that the EU did not consider a parliament with 80 or so unelected army officers topping up the […]
In the wake of late September’s German election maths and Merkel have set the stage for a traffic light coalition of red – social-democratic SPD – amber – liberal Free Democrats – and Greens. Luckily, for the SPD Chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz, but tragic for the left the option of a Left Coalition between the […]
One of the Tory/BREXIT canards about the European Union (EU) were claims to its undemocratic nature. There was a ‘democratic deficit’, but Brussels was far less overdrawn in that account than claimed. It was all a bit rich coming from a country, whose own political architecture, with its patronage House of Lords chamber, would fail […]
Much has been written in the long shadow of Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on the fate of its British equivalent. Yet, unlike Rome, that collapse has yet to go to completion. Within one Empire was hiding a second. The post-war collapse of Empire was the first act of […]
Biden’s was a ‘good’ bad win. He took the Presidency, held the House – albeit with a reduced majority – but failed to take the Senate. The two run-offs in Georgia look possible rather than probable. Even a win in both races leaves the Senate dead-locked at 50-50 and only breaking to the Democrats for […]
The timing of the Brexit deal was designed to allow minimum scrutiny and maximum gasps of relief. By waiting until Christmas Eve to sign off a deal that could – and should – have been completed months ago, Boris Johnson has set an oven-ready trap for Labour. No-one should be fooled by this smoke and […]
Beijing rightly stands condemned for its massive over-reaction to problems in Xinjiang of Uyghur separatism and associated terrorism. Equally its reneging on the deal with the UK that in accordance with the ‘once country, two systems’ principle Hong Kong’s existing system and way of life would be unchanged for 50 years until 2047 is shocking […]
The threat of nuclear proliferation around the globe today is greater than it has been for at least a quarter of a century. Two of the main sources of contagion are in Tehran and Pyongyang, but both cases are products of the wider political environment rather than consequences of domestic politics. The lessons of Iran […]
The new European commission must do more to align trade and political cooperation with Beijing The next 18 months to two years will be a watershed period in relation between the European Union and China. At the end they will either be flying high or they will have failed to take off. There is a […]
The compass the EU uses as it looks for the right path in dealing with China is faulty. Last month in Brussels the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao attended his last China-EU summit. On the surface, it was a resounding success, with a joint statement of 49 paragraphs and seven pages promising consultation, dialogue and the […]