He was arguably the world’s best known politician. Cuba was a tiny island of little consequence but Castro put it in the forefront of the politics and tensions of the cold war. He ousted by armed force a cruel and despotic dictatorship which made most Cuban’s lives a misery (which was inexplicably backed by the […]
This blog, as regular readers know, is constantly critical of the attitudes of the EU and NATO to Russia. Post Soviet Russia should have been brought into both the EU and NATO. The failure to do so made Russia feel threatened, especially after the eastward expansion of the union and the alliance. The ridiculous support […]
This blog tended to predict that Hammond would come forward with something bold and inspiring which would kick start a period of sustained growth independent of Brexit, driven by massive house building of affordable rental homes, modernization of hard infrastructure like roads, railways and hospitals and soft infrastructure as in broadband, 5 G, universal mobile […]
Reports multiply of angry ministers complaining that Downing Street has made a horlicks of the incoming Trump transition and allowed Nigel Farage to steal the show. Certainly Don and Nige are big mates, see eye to eye on a good deal and Don wants Nige to be the Brit Ambassador to Washington. May has become […]
Three senior Tory backbenchers, all Remainers, but supported by a prominent Tory Leaver, have urged May to drop her appeal to the Supreme Court and get on with pushing a bill through parliament to activate Article 50. They fear she will lose and thus waste time and a good deal of public money. Downing Street […]
This must now be a question, even if there is not yet an answer. The scale of the legal complexities now emerging on every front are beginning to frighten even those who understand them. Not only are there problems with the constitutional process, but parliament has to enact something watertight, or else there could be […]
Not yet. However reform is long overdue. At the end of the cold war I declared that with the disbanding of the Warsaw Pact, NATO too should stand down, since the threat which it was designed to deter had gone away. The problem with military alliances is that if they are not needed to counter a […]
There are reports that Donald Trump’s transition process is proving bumpy. This is not surprising. Like Brexit, few believed even in his own team that he could actually win and preparations for such a dramatic outcome were limited. But the biggest problem Trump will be battling just now is that he is his own man, […]
Today’s argument with the Prison Officers, ending in a government court injunction forcing them back to work, is a symptom of a big storm brewing, which Hammond has to deal with in his long awaited Autumn Statement, in effect his first Budget. The problem, and it is big with multiple focus points, is that after years […]
That is a good question. Because since the June vote and the leisurely pace of the government coming to terms with the complexities of its exit task, for which no preparations whatever had been made, the world has changed almost beyond recognition. So the environment for the negotiations bears little connection to that which prevailed when […]