There is now real opportunity to move forward in the Middle East. This is not because some breakthrough in negotiations has occurred or is in prospect. It is because the established order and balance, which has stood unchanged for decades and which Israel has relied upon to fashion its policy, is now falling away in the phenomenon dubbed the Arab Spring. […]
In terms of political significance for the people of these islands, the visit of the Queen and Prince Philip to Ireland is one of the most important and historic of her long reign, perhaps the most significant of all. It is certainly the most overtly political. This could never be just a goodwill trip where the Queen was above politics. […]
We cannot recall anything quite like the astonishing situation surrounding Dominique Strauss-Kahn since the arrest of Jeremy Thorpe, the then leader of the Liberal Party in the UK, for conspiracy to murder. Thorpe was tried and acquitted. The court scenes were dramatic as his defence counsel (George Carmen) undermined the prosecution case, but the Not […]
Following a recent download of Explorer 9, we were unaware that this caused the WordPress Spell Check facility to malfunction. This resulted in two or three posts with an unusual number of typos, until the problem was spotted. These have now been corrected and while the boffins work on the problem, we are using our alternative browser, Google Chrome. […]
There has been a call by the head of the UK Armed Forces for NATO to widen its targets to include civilian infrastructure otherwise ‘Col Gaddafi may hang on to power’. There are several points of contention. First, under the conventions of the UK Constitution, military officers carry out policy, they do not make it. […]
The West and particularly the US is, with good intentions, doing things that will only make matters worse in the long run in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The current policy is one of containment, whatever else it is dressed up to be. Pakistan is seen as part of the problem to be contained. It is instead […]
This has turned out better than expected for the first quarter of 2011. Germany with 1.5% and France with 1% are both doing best of the bigger economies and better than the UK, which manged just 0.5%. Significantly, very significantly in fact, neither entered the global crisis with a property boom nor excessive consumer debt. […]
It may seem an odd moment, just after an election or set of elections, to read trends from opinion polls, but nevertheless that is what this blog now proposes to do. The Lib Dems faced a more calamitous outcome in all the various elections than they could ever have imagined, topped by a landslide against […]
Politicians and economists of every stripe agree that what is needed is growth. Then comes the divide. The broad left want to maintain or more slowly reduce government spending; the broad right want to re-allign the economy away from big state towards private enterprise and cut vigourously to reduce the deficit twice as fast. Each […]
Greece is at a standstill today as angry workers protest at the emasculation of living standards and available jobs. Never before has any country tried so drastic a reduction in GDP. The widespread expectation among economists not in a state of denial, is that Greece will have to default, no matter what. The big matter […]