… But far and away the most important thing here is just that, if these concerns about sovereign debt were to spread to a wider range of countries – and I hope the measures taken at the weekend and the measures that will now be taken will stop that and […]
Today I made my debut on the Agenda programme recorded for Press TV, an international media outlet paid for by Iran Broadcasting. The subject was British Foreign Policy after the UK elections. The programme should go out this weekend, or maybe the weekend after. Islamic journalist Yvonne Ridley was the host. [Update: […]
Will the Eurozone move to help the UK if we fall into difficulties? Hell no: Jean-Pierre Jouyet, a former French Europe minister and the current chairman of France’s financial services authority, yesterday predicted only "God would help" a rudderless Britain after it snubbed its euro zone neighbours. "There is not […]
The BBC asks a good question. Why has Eton produced so many MPs and PMs? With its Victorian-era uniform, and rules dating back through the centuries, Eton is often perceived as a rigid, conformist institution. But according to Nick Fraser, author of the book The Importance of Being Eton, the […]
Update: The EU (improbably) as … Dirty Harry. Click through to the wonderful link. * * * * * If I were a diplomat from Mars reporting back to HQ on the wheeler-dealings of the pitiful earthlings in this part of the planet, I’d be starting to suggest that the […]
The grim machinations unfolding in and around Westminster are merely what would happen every election if we had some sort of more ‘proportional’ voting system. In countries where coalition politics is the norm governments can take many weeks, sometimes even months, to form. This wastes time and demoralises the public. It […]
Do our political leaders think about the reality of the difficulties we face as they haggle over the results of the election? The policies of Gordon Brown as trumpeted by Blair/Mandelson/Miliband/Polly for more than a decade have been ruinous beyond any calculation. The very fact that senior Lib Dems are […]
Question What’s the only thing on any political party’s mind after winning an election? Answer The next election Why? What else do political parties think about? Having won an election because their policies and style had the most appeal, the winners think only about how best to […]
Even before any new coalition or understanding is set up here between Conservatives and Lib Dems and/or anyone else, the awful reality of European Union processes intrudes. The Guardian makes a crude lunge to create divisions right from the start: Tory-Lib Dem coalition threatened by secret hardline memo on Europe […]
Remember the Copenhagen Summit climate change debacle? The terrific Spiegel Online has fascinating material said to be extracted from tape-recordings of the key meeting between Merkel/Brown/Sarkozy/Obama and the Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister, there because the Chinese Prime Minister did not deign to join the gathering: Now, for the first time, […]
