Remember this one about South Africa’s peaceful transition from apartheid? Try to imagine the howling of fury had apartheid leader PW Botha denied the African population of S Africa the drugs needed to give sick people a chance to fight HIV – and 300,000 people had died as a result. […]
Polly Toynbee’s volume rises in direct proportion to the slide in share prices. Her latest rather freewheeling thoughts open thusly: A remarkable 10,000 people marched on Trafalgar Square at the weekend to hold the government to its promise to end child poverty. This somehow reminded me of my visit back […]
Is Zimbabwe’s political power-sharing agreement good or bad for Zimbabwe? If anything is deemed to be better than total collapse, it might be seen as good (for the time being, until it isn’t). But it sets a wretched precedent. It has all the moral stature of a deal between a […]
Are international tribunals for war crimes suspects a Good Idea? And if so, are they being Done Well? If not, does that mean that the Idea is in fact not so Good? Two excellent pieces on these themes: one by John Lloyd, the other by Bill Montgomery. It goes without […]
There are not too many UN Security Council vetoes. So when one comes along it shows that things at that top table are not in good shape – lack of grown-up consensus and/or serious miscalculation by those who pushed the offending Resolution. Although of course there may be cases where […]
Tempting as it is to disagree on sight with everything written by Jonathan Steele in the Guardian, I did think about this one arguing the case against the International Criminal Court indicting the President of Sudan. Spared as I am from knowing the slightest thing about Sudan, what might I offer […]
Nelson Mandela was finally released from prison to global acclaim on 11 February 1990. Despite being First Secretary (Political) at our Embassy in Cape Town at the time, I missed it. My friend and colleague John (now Sir John) Sawers was there in the thick of the action, and was probably […]
This sorry Swedish story attracted fleeting global attention. A school in Sweden confiscated a boy’s party invitations being handed out to his friends as two classmates were not invited: "Two people in class had not been invited, and that is not allowed. The ones who were not invited felt sad […]
One of the most piquant features of the British Parliamentary voting system is that it is so well established and so well analysed that pundits can predict with a high degree of accuracy which MPs will lose their seats for any given % swing of opinion against the government at […]
Daniel Finkelstein in the Times also takes up the charge against John Simpson’s wretched analysis of the latest news from Zimbabwe. And Lord Ashdown argues the case for intervening by force in Zimbabwe to head off a possible genocide. But, comes the shriek, that would violate Zimbabwe’s sovereignty! Recently I was a […]
