World
Putin’s poisonous prisoner
Alexei Navalny, the man Putin tried to poison, has been sent to prison for two years and eight months — conveniently…
Central Europe’s vaccine scepticism problem
Countries around the world are in a race against time to vaccinate their populations against Covid-19. But there is one…
Kamala Harris’s Orwellian future
Do you suppose that Kamala Harris is a student of Jane Austen? The contingency, as Jeeves was wont to observe,…
When will Pakistan take a stand against terror?
Last week, Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered the release of UK born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh who was accused of kidnapping…
Can ‘surge testing’ get new variants under control?
A year on, in one sense we’re pretty well back to where we started — with the government attempting to…
AOC’s body politics
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is no stranger to attention. The second-term congresswoman was the second most talked-about politician in 2019, just…
America doesn’t need a ‘patriot party’
Many Trump supporters are rightly upset over the Republican establishment’s abandonment of the 45th president. But those calling for the…
Concern grows over South African variant
Although there’s plenty of positive vaccine news to go around, the latest government press conference offered a sobering reminder of…
Will Myanmar’s military get away with their coup?
In 1962 the Myanmar military staged a coup d’etat. Their iron-fisted rule lasted 49 years. On Monday, after a nine-year…
Why vaccine nationalism won’t end in 2021
After the EU’s behaviour last week, no one can be under any illusion about how nationalistic the pandemic has now…
What happened to the populist left?
To this day, my iPhone still changes the word ‘too’ to ‘TPP,’ a reminder that about five years ago I…
One year after Brexit, Britain is reaping the benefits of independence
A year ago today Britain awoke to a rather muted celebration – which seemed to consist largely of a bubble…
Ursula von der Leyen has always left a trail of disaster
The German Army had to join a NATO exercise with broomsticks because they didn’t have any rifles. It’s special forces…
The free speech row tearing apart the tech community
Donald Trump’s Twitter suspension after the riot at the US Capitol made headlines around the world. What was less reported,…
Might Macron lose to Le Pen?
The latest French opinion poll puts Marine Le Pen on around 26 per cent, ahead of President Emmanuel Macron on 23 per…
Can Spain’s faith in the EU survive Covid?
According to ancient Moorish legend, when the world was created each land was given five wishes. Spain’s first four wishes…
Alexei Navalny is getting under the Kremlin’s skin
Only half a year ago the opposition leader Alexei Navalny was a non-person on Russian state media, and Putin’s opulent…
The worth of the ‘word as a Biden’
What’s the worth of the ‘word as a Biden’? President Joe Biden seems sure that his family name is as…
The EU’s vaccine opportunism will not be forgotten
At first, it sounded like empty rage. The European Union had spent all week making wild statements about controlling vaccine…
Why do Innocent drinks think this pensioner is guilty of ‘transphobia’?
The trans debate can be a nasty one. And when women (and it usually is women) have the courage to speak…
Could this drug offer immediate protection from Covid-19?
When Donald Trump returned to the White House after a brief spell in hospital with Covid-19 last October he made…
Who are the Reddit traders?
The anarchic traders of Reddit stunned stock-markets this week, boosting the share price of struggling retailer GameStop by some 400…
The Johnson & Johnson jab is a game changer
Good vaccine news has been pouring in today — this afternoon it was the turn of the Janssen vaccine, made by US…
Are Biden voters sick and tired of winning yet?
It goes without saying that reading mainstream American news has become both pointless and profoundly depressing since the election of…
Joe Biden, high priest of the cult of woke
‘Do you think he died of dispossession?’ That’s the facetious question the nameless hero of Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel, Invisible…
