Politics & Economics

Despite a few halting steps towards devolving power in Britain, England itself remains a profoundly centralised country, in which national politics always dominates. So why not send a national message?...

Many of those who had been involved in the war’s inception saw the chaotic Nato withdrawal in August 2021 as a betrayal both of Afghanistan and of the project of American power in the world. As with...

If it were an industry, money laundering would be the third biggest business in the world, behind commercial property and ahead of pensions. How did we end up knowing so little about something so big? 

Maritime trade has always had to negotiate geographic bottlenecks: the Suez Canal, for example, or the Malacca Strait or the Strait of Hormuz. Controlling these narrow passages, through which large volumes...

Can there be poetic justice in politics? Perhaps once in a lifetime. In 1989, a young Viktor Orbán bravely told the crowds in Budapest’s Heroes’ Square that it was time for the Russians to go home,...

Since 1922, the Labour Party has won in Wales at every general election, and has been the largest party in all of the country’s devolved governments since the National Assembly, now known as the Senedd,...

From the 16th century onwards, as European powers feverishly colonised the world, the possibility of a Northern Sea Route connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Scandinavia to the Bering Strait,...

This is what distinguishes hyperpolitics from the mass democracy of the mid-20th century. Symbolic political gestures are now commonplace, but paid membership of organisations and parties has plummeted....

Patrick Radden Keefe’s London Falling is a book about a city but it’s also a book about families and shows that even good parents can lose sight of their children. I was often reminded of Oliver Twist,...

Most of the Gaza Strip – cities, refugee camps, schools, universities, mosques, the health infrastructure, agriculture, wells and the soil itself – has been destroyed and made toxic by bombs, artillery,...

Lebanon’s civil war did not end in 1990. It assumed new forms and it isn’t over yet. Like my colleagues, I returned to Lebanon again and again to cover each eruption of violence. Most of the wars we...

The Trump administration has introduced two new policies that aim to turn citizens into migrants who can be expelled. The first, a narrowing of birthright citizenship, has attracted considerable public...

It’s no surprise that Operation Roaring Lion (Israel’s name for its campaign) and Operation Epic Fury (as the US calls its own) bear the hallmarks of Israel’s offensives on the Gaza Strip. War with...

On​ 1 November 2024, the canopy of a recently renovated train station in Novi Sad collapsed, killing sixteen people. In the weeks that followed, a new protest movement coalesced; it continues to demonstrate...

‘The name’s Steele, Christopher Steele.’ That’s the way a former MI6 operative who wrote the notorious dossier alleging collusion between Trump and Putin introduced himself at a debate at the Cambridge...

Despite the misinformation and alienation that have led so many citizens to regard democracy in general with despair or contempt, a majority of people have a clear understanding of what Nigel Farage stands...

It may well be true that Israeli officials told the White House they planned to attack Iran with or without American help. But to suggest that the US has been led by Israel into a war in which it otherwise...

The enduring liberal fantasy that Melania Trump is unwilling, trapped, in need of rescue, #FreeMelania, has never squared with the most rigorous reporting about her. Gestures that commentators read during...