Technocrats, commentators and business people are excellent at laying out what is necessary; what ‘must be done’ in public policy to move forward. Politicians, who live in the real world, are, on the other hand, necessarily focused on what is actually doable. And therein lies the Brexit peril we are now in. First, let us […]
OPINION
The UN and their fine words on migration
Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General, was in the spotlight on Monday, in sunny Marrakech. Delegations had arrived from more than 150 countries to endorse a non-binding but highly symbolic text: the United Nations Global Compact on Migration. It aims to build co-operation among nations to organize “safe, orderly and regular migration”. The idea was for […]
Will the Conservative Party survive?
I remember as a youngster in Malta when Malta had an utterly pathetic football team, a 4-0 defeat in, say, Germany would be hailed by the local papers as a moral victory. We hadn’t lost by the expected 12-0. So it is with the vote of confidence in the Prime Minister. Nobody has (yet) cast doubt […]
Why the middle classes take to the streets
It occasionally sends a frisson of political fear down the backbone when you hear about a centrist politician like Macron booed in affluent areas of Paris. Especially when he is all that stands between France and Marine Le Pen. It is also a surprise to conventional politicians, of which we have rather more than out […]
Is AKK the future of Germany?
Adenauer, Erhard, Kiesinger, Barzel, Kohl, Schäuble, Merkel, Kramp-Karrenbauer. The list of the party chairmen and chairwomen of the Christian Democrats in Germany contains a number of luminaries who have shaped German and European history. The last of these, newly crowned on 7 December, is a tongue twister even for German commentators, though fortunately Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer […]
The meaning of the blue ripple
I was in the US the week of the mid-term elections and it was interesting to watch the campaigning, listen to radio and TV ads, and speak to people about their feelings. The most noticeable thing was the extreme polarization of US political debate. It was reminiscent of the Brexit debate in Britain – a […]
Is France shooting itself in the foot?
In the space of three weeks, France has given the world two quite different views of its famous Arc de Triomphe. On November 11, in front of an audience of seventy foreign leaders, the President of the Republic praised multilateralism for solving global problems and disputes between nations. On December 1, this symbolic monument of […]
What happens when a country doesn’t have enough skilled migrants…
“Queue-jumping”, “swamped” by migrants, caravans of migrants threatening to invade. The anti-migrant rhetoric especially of the far right, currently in the ascendancy across the UK, Europe and the USA, is all too familiar. But, as so often, one country is bucking the trend. Fachkräfte-Einwanderungsgesetz. Only in German could such a wonderful, convoluted compound word exist, […]
The dangerous deterioration of the Ukrainian conflict
On Sunday, November 25, a conflict that was thought to be frozen suddenly came to life. A tug and two small patrol boats from the Ukrainian navy had left the port of Odessa on the Black Sea to reach Mariupol on the Sea of Azov. They were intercepted by Russian coastguards off the Kerch Strait […]
Iran: the mullahs’ moment of choice
The Iranian population is out of luck. In the presidential elections of 2013, then those of 2017, they had declared themselves ready for the opening up of the country. In the meagre choice offered by the conservative theocratic system that is in place, the Iranian people had chosen the most determined candidate to return to […]
- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 45
- Next Page »
