Could excessive/unwise EU regulation of the power sector cause the UK power generation sector ruinous problems? The problem in this complex policy area is that the lead times for taking decisions are necessarily long (power stations cost a lot of money), and decisions once made have to be lived with […]
Echoing as if by magic my thoughts earlier today on Junk Diplomacy, some trenchant observations from Mark Steyn: Increasingly, the Western world has attitudes rather than policies. It’s one thing to talk as a means to an end. But these days, for most midlevel powers, talks are the end, talks […]
… about the Democratic nomination race in the USA. Hillary Clinton’s chances look to rely on bringing into the reckoning the Democrat delegates from Florida and Michigan, who for internal party reasons (as things stand) are excluded. Byron York nails it: Her demand was pooh-poohed in some circles of the commentariat, but […]
More on EU Foreign Policy. What is a ‘foreign policy’? Let’s assume that, crudely speaking, it is something like this: What Country A (maybe in partnership with countries B, C etc) does to get another country to do things it otherwise might not do on its own, either because that outcome is in […]
EU Referendum’s thoughts on why a ‘European Foreign Policy’ is not a good idea got me thinking. What actually is ‘Foreign Policy’ anyway? Could the EU in fact be good at some aspects of it but not all? What are the pros and cons for the UK of ‘More Europe’ in the […]
Returning to the history of those 2005 EU Budget negotiations. It was clear from the outset to anyone in the know (a) that there would be an increased EU budget, and (b) that those who Give and not those who Get would determine just how much bigger. Since […]
But there’s more to conservatism than low taxes, Jesus, and waterboarding at Gitmo. Conservatism is also a matter of honor, duty, valor, patriotism, self-discipline, responsibility, good order, respect for our national institutions, reverence for the traditions of civilization, and adherence to the political honesty upon which all principles of democracy […]
Greetings, readers from EU Referendum, who have seen the interesting comment there by Helen (I assume Szamuely) on one of my earlier entries about different national negotiating styles. Helen calls me on whether the Russian approach to negotiating in fact works, giving some examples where the picture at best is mixed. […]
On my Foreign Office travels I have picked up a goodly selection of ‘European’ languages to add to my distant A-Level French and Latin and O-Level German and Spanish. First, back in 1981 I learned lot of Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian (then called ‘Serbo-Croat’). After that I reached a reasonable standard in Afrikaans – […]
My observations on Power and Purpose attracted this interesting thought from someone in the Mini containing my ever-growing army of readers, himself once closely involved in British government sharp-end business: It always struck me that the FCO was truly excellent when faced with a bad situation. They could be relied […]
