The report that NHS staff are to ask questions about a patient’s sexuality ‘to avoid discrimination’ suggests suggest a blunder somewhere. First of all discrimination of all kinds is illegal and one would imagine entirely absent from the NHS. If it is not, asking intrusive and personal questions gratuitously will not help. Of course, if […]
What matters here is this. The agreement to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons took years to conclude, involved all the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany and also the EU. All signed the treaty. The difference between civilised nations and rogue states is that the former sign agreements and stick to them […]
There are two roads open to Brexit. One is the hard model favoured by the hard right of the Tory Party. It is driven by ideology and is willing to pay any price in terms of economic damage and loss of freedoms for what it sees as some Utopian national independence. In an interdependent world […]
According to reports on reputable media Trump will make a working visit to the UK in the New Year, which will be part of his proposed tour of European capitals. There will be no pomp or processions, nor staying at the Palace, no address to parliament. It will be strictly business. This is in line […]
From the beginning it went wrong. Cameron called a referendum and lost it. May came to power and failed to master her brief, arguing and dithering for months before triggering Article 50. When she did so she offered high rhetoric and even loftier aspiration in an initial situation which required fine detail and careful analysis […]
The problem of the dream of independence for small countries absorbed into larger ones, or nations of people in a region split between two or more countries, is that achieving independence requires a large degree of unanimity if it is to succeed. It needs the backing of the country of which it is a part […]
It is an extraordinary collapse of government authority when almost the only topic of political conversation is the survival of the prime minister. So having said most of what was useful in yesterday’s post, here are just a few more thoughts. Talk of leadership challenges and stalking horses are rubbish. For years now the Tory […]
Like all end games, their length is uncertain until the end is reached. But this government is now spiraling out of control. Markets, the EU, business and the most hard pressed generation since WWII, let down by the most unfair economic model in modern history, are all walking away from a complete shambles of governance. […]
It is impossible not to feel sympathy for the hapless May as she struggled through a coughing fit, a prank and bits dropping off the decor, to deliver her speech; all of it a metaphor for her imploding administration. What rubbish she talks! There is all this stuff about creating some kind of Utopia from […]
As an object lesson in how not to do things the Spanish government’s handling of its Catalonia problem is hard to beat. At the same time we have to remind ourselves that Spain is a relatively new democracy without the longevity and experience of the opportunities and limitations of the form of government described by […]