The Hillary Clinton Ship of Destiny sails on, despite gaping Emailgate holes appearing above and below the waterline. Back in August last year I wrote about her already ghastly email problems: So for me the very fact that Hillary Clinton set up a parallel substantive private email arrangement for much […]
Remember my football negotiation thoughts on the sundry attempts by Tottenham Hotspur FC to buy Saido Berahino last year? That possibility rumbles on in the 2016 UK winter ‘transfer window’, a month when clubs can buy or sell players mid-season to try to improve their chances in the coming race […]
Last week I took part in a debate at The Arts Club in London on the foreign policy of President Obama. I was joined by Toby Young opposing the motion proposed by former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and the BBC’s Mark Mardell that Obama’s foreign policy has been a success. Julia Hartley-Brewer […]
Here’s my piece today for the Daily Telegraph on the mighty Owen Report on the murder by polonium poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko. With added Katyn: For anyone interested in the way governments operate, there is nothing more astonishing than the policy memorandum sent from Beria to Stalin in 1940, tersely […]
My previous post linked to the new gloomy piece by Robert Kaplan for the WSJ, in which he ponders the possibility of Europe reverting to deep historical fault-lines: The sturdy core of modern Europe approximates in large measure the Carolingian Empire founded by Charlemagne in the ninth century. The first […]
Around the planet the world’s networked seismographs will have revealed in seconds all sorts of things about North Korea’s latest big bomb test, hydrogen or otherwise. Notably that it was indeed a bomb (and not an earthquake) and where exactly the test took place. Other instruments will be tracing the […]
“I glance over your web-site every now and again, and usually find something to enjoy and even by which to be impressed.” So writes a long-lost pal from college, taking grammar to its limits to avoid finishing a sentence with a preposition. Not that there’s been much to see here […]
Here’s my latest piece for DIPLOMAT. On the always fascinating subject of diplomatic entertaining: It’s easy to be a diplomatic guest. Just be polite. Show up when you’ve undertaken to do so, dressed appropriately. Then do not get drunk or behave disgracefully. If the event is something special (i.e. not […]
My latest piece for the Telegraph on the shooting down by Turkey of a Russian bomber. A belligerent set of comments, mostly feuding with each other to no helpful purpose and having nothing to do with my piece if anyone actually read it. Russia ‘of course’ will respond. But it’s […]
Sad news that Lord Howe has died. I had the great honour to serve as FCO speechwriter for him from 1985-87 when he was Foreign Secretary. Of course back then before email and word-processors speechwriting was a ponderous business, with drafts being typed and retyped on hi-tech golfball typewriters by […]
