Writing about the BBC by James Butler, Stefan Collini, Marilyn Butler, Owen Bennett-Jones, Andrew O’Hagan, Jenny Turner, Jenny Diski, Karl Miller, Ian Jack, Lynsey Hanley and Hugo Williams.
Geopolitics is never untethered from political struggles and the world’s prime mover isn’t located somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, even if so much malignant power has emanated from Europe and North America. Oil, money and democracy aren’t always about the calculations of a few powerful governments.
Outsiders never get to locate the exact point a legitimate business crosses the line and starts cheating. That’s a pity, because it would be interesting to know what’s running through the mind of a . . .
As Boris Johnson limped towards his final prime ministerial disgrace, his supporters in the Conservative Party and the press believed they had hit on a strategy for weathering the mounting economic . . .
‘There is a natural and perfectly viable kingdom of the North between the Humber and the Forth-Clyde isthmus,’ the historian Frank Musgrove claimed in 1990. It wasn’t the best moment to use the present . . .
In 1852, a group of Chinese community leaders in San Francisco published a pamphlet taking issue with claims made by California’s governor, John Bigler, who had characterised the state’s 7520 Chinese . . .
By comparison with the scale of the upheaval through which Brazil has lived in the last five years, and the gravity of its possible outcome, the histrionics over Brexit in this country and the conniptions over Trump in America are close to much ado about nothing.
Environmentalism might have looked like a bourgeois playground to Edward Said. The Israeli state has long coated its nation-building project in a green veneer – it was a key part of the Zionist ‘back to the land’ pioneer ethos. And in this context trees, specifically, have been among the most potent weapons of land grabbing and occupation.
The government has stopped short of explicitly declaring war on the poor, but how different would the situation be if it had?
In 1992, a year after the first Gulf War, I heard Dick Cheney, then secretary of defense, say that the US had been wise not to invade Baghdad and get ‘bogged down in the problems of trying...
In The Color of Truth*, the American scholar Kai Bird presents his study of McGeorge (‘Mac’) and William Bundy. These were the two dynastic technocrats who organised and...
That capitalism unobstructed by public regulations, cartels, monopolies, oligopolies, effective trade unions, cultural inhibitions or kinship obligations is the ultimate engine of economic growth...
Now that some of the euphoria has lifted, it is possible to re-examine the Israeli-PLO agreement with the required common sense. What emerges from such scrutiny is a deal that is more flawed and,...
A lot of people throughout Europe have suddenly realised that they know hardly anything about the Maastricht Treaty while rightly sensing that it could make a huge difference to their lives....
In recent times in Ireland we have been reminded of a lot of anniversaries. Remembering the past is something of an obsession here. The future, discussing it or shaping it, doesn’t seem...
Writing about the BBC by James Butler, Stefan Collini, Marilyn Butler, Owen Bennett-Jones, Andrew O’Hagan, Jenny Turner, Jenny Diski, Karl Miller, Ian Jack, Lynsey Hanley and Hugo Williams.
Writing about the police by Barbara Wootton, Alice Spawls, Adam Reiss, Ronan Bennett, Thomas Jones, Paul Foot, Katrina Forrester, Melanie McFadyean, Matt Foot and Christopher Tayler.
David Runciman reflects on Trump, Brexit and threats to democracy, with some help from Alexis de Tocqueville.
Adam Tooze examines an alternative, counterintuitive vision of America, as a power defying gravity.
We hear David's thoughts on why so many people - including podcasts like this one! - keep calling elections wrong.
Worst-case scenarios for democracy - especially since Trump's victory - hark back to how democracy has failed in the past. So do we really risk a return to the 1930s?
We catch up with Gary Gerstle and Helen Thompson about the state of the Trump presidency, from impeachment and cover-ups to Syria and Ukraine.
Economist Ann Pettifor talks to Grace Blakeley about the origins of the Green New Deal, and why we need it.
David, Helen and other Talking Politics regulars gather the morning after the Tory triumph the night before to discuss how they did it and what it means.
James Meek argues that the Robin Hood myth has been turned on its head by the wealthiest and most powerful, so that those who were previously considered 'poor' are now accused of wallowing in luxury.
There was a film of Condoleezza Rice interviewing Larry Ellison about what could be learned from the vertically integrated corporate model being pioneered by Elon Musk at Tesla. Barring Blair’s, Musk’s...
New group chats have sprung up to share the latest intel on which spots are secretly open. The best coded advertisement was for a badminton gym: ‘Due to Covid restrictions, our gym is not open to the...
The next prime minister will most likely be chosen by an electorate of two hundred thousand wealthy geriatrics and small-town Poujadistes, who nurture obsessions with Europe, taxation, migrants and other...
Each of the five Acts of Parliament is intended to increase government control: over Parliament, over elections, over the courts, over immigrants and over public demonstrations. How it all brings back...
IN one of the many videos circulating on social media of people celebrating the results of Colombia’s presidential election run-off on 19 June, a man bursts from a door onto a small...
The legacy of two decades of war can’t be measured just by the number of abandoned airbases and military installations, or by the tens of thousands of Afghans killed. In these years of suicide bombings...
The internet was supposed to be different. The new technologies central to contemporary capitalism offer the possibility of improving our working lives, even if they do so partly by eliminating our jobs....
Silence is the defining quality of wealth. Private security operatives whisper into their fists while patrolling a zone of distrust. Silence repels unexplained outsiders who dare to trespass on the shaved...
The corruption allegations against Lula may have been hazy, but those against his party were well-founded and damning. This fact is often lost in a soup of accusations and counter-accusations, and the...
Lea Ypi recovers the sensory world of communist Albania: its privations, its ecstasies, but also its banalities. Young people in Albania fretted over what to wear to school just like children elsewhere....
Cheap palm oil is part of an interlocking late capitalist system. When we say there is a demand for RBD palm oil, we mean there is a demand for instant noodles and foamy shampoo in plastic bottles and...
National grain supplies are an emotive subject: they are a test of the basic competence of the administrative state. An empty central granary once meant imminent political collapse. Russia’s invasion...
Democrats were so overjoyed at defeating Trump that for a time they failed to notice that the election returns called into question the demographic determinism which in recent years has led many Democrats...
While orthodox Marxists had long argued that the purpose of racism was to divide workers, Black and white workers in South Africa already had different relations to capital. Apartheid racism was essential...
Refugees are rarely able to get visas: you aren’t classified as a refugee under the 1951 Geneva Convention until you are outside your country and unable or unwilling to return. And once outside it, you...
Who’s to say that one version of Welsh nationalism is more ‘true’ than any other? The claim that ‘Wales is a nation’ isn’t a descriptive statement: it is – or aspires to be – an illocutionary...
Russian forces near Kyiv have made little progress in the past week, but are dug in at their positions. In Mariupol and Kharkiv Russian forces chose encirclement and bombardment over the occupation of...
In February, the price of coated papers was up 78 per cent from last year. The manufacturers may have wanted higher prices, but dramatic hikes are bad for the industry’s stability as well as for buyers....
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