With Ecuador set to make an announcement later today about Julian Assange and his bid for asylum (he currently is skulking in their Embassy in London) the BBC World Service have just interviewed me for some background on the way bids for ‘asylum’ in Embassies work in practice. I drew on my […]
I stir well clear of this one as I don’t know anything significant about it from first-hand experience. Here is a well-turned piece by Tom Phillips, my old colleague from the FCO and its handling of Balkan problems in 1999-2001 and then UK Ambassador to both Israel and Saudi Arabia. […]
Here is my latest piece at Telegraph Blogs: Our Ambassador to the United Nations Sir Mark Lyall-Grant has come out strongly against this further Russia/Chinese veto: “Russia and China are failing in their responsibilities as permanent members, they are failing the people of Syria … The effect of their actions […]
Here is an unusually astute piece by Aaron David Miller at Foreign Policy looking at key negotiation mistakes made at the 2000 Camp David Peace Talks which he followed at first hand. You’ll need to read the whole thing to get the breadth of his argument. What is good is […]
As the Arab Spring slumps into the Arab Mess in most areas, we ignorant onlookers find ourselves wondering about the real range of political options and opinions in that region. What spectrum of options do most Arabs accept as legitimate and realistic when they sit at home moaning about their […]
Back in distant 2008 I wrote about the vile N-word: What is the precise mechanism which makes people start to talk in arch post-modern jargon? Like this: Labour needs to provide a convincing new narrative if left-of-centre politics are to remain the driving force in Britain. Or this: Mr Brown […]
Here is my Commentator piece on the Wisconsin election: The key fact in last night’s Wisconsin recall election? Over 30 percent of households with a union member in them voted for Walker. A strong majority of people in Wisconsin got the core Tea Party political and moral message: stop unaffordable […]
I have linked here before to various wonderful stories and insights by Ray Bradbury who died this week after a long life of writing genius. The appreciations pour forth. Here is a nice one. Here is a rare example on the Internet of a full short story by him: ‘No […]
Here are the answers I have given to some questions about Russia, over on the Russia Insights website: What are 3 positive things you would say about Russia? Russia’s sense of itself – a quite different idea of scale, and what that means both for national policy and in historical and […]
You’ve probably been wondering what happened to that really cool Arab Spring stuff when all the young liberal Arabs we’ve been trying to find for so long finally got on Twitter and Facebook and linked up. And changed the world! So has Mark Steyn – read the whole piece (of course) […]
