This will be the fourth time the UK and US will share an election year. Two from the past three election resulted in both a Democrat and Labour win. Not bad statistics to work from. Enough to give you hope, but not enough to rest on your laurels. It makes
Over the past few years we have suffered unforeseen breakdowns in global supply chains – covid, limited access through the Red Sea and Suez canal, piracy and war zones. In parallel there has been a steady unwinding of trade globalisation as tariffs and bureaucratic barriers to easy movement of goods
Leonard Cohen crooned “There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn’t.” If the ability to count is essential in politics so is clearly defining the drivers of war and peace.The hard-left Stop the War Coalition – the stoppers
Being an Israeli lefty means walking an incredibly lonely road. It means to be a Zionist (believing that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish-majority state), but also to believe in a peace with the Palestinians through the two-state solution. We are the ultimate outcasts; Israeli nationalists marginalise
A cautionary tale, at scale. In the end, every political campaign is a lesson in revisionism. Those that win are assumed to have been touched by genius, masterminded by a rare masterclass of orchestration. Policy and communications singing in Beach Boys harmony. Lead candidates and their deputies a Torvill and
The similarities with the Labour government of 1964 and a potential Labour government of 2024 are hard to overstate, especially when it comes to defence – the shadow defence secretaries in the lead up to both elections even share the same surname. When Denis Healey became the Secretary of State
The rhetoric delivered by some British policymakers that Rwanda is safe and prosperous presents an incomplete perspective of the country. Rwandans do not understand the rationale of the UK Government’s plan to transfer asylum seekers from Britain to Rwanda. Rwandans often flee their country to seek asylum elsewhere. According to the
The Hamas pogrom and civilian casualties in Gaza are expanding a profound faultline between the “Kibbutzim Left” and the “Nakba Left.” The first says that the creation of Israel was legitimate and that its collectivist communes and Labour Governments were beacons of hope. The second focuses on displaced Palestinians in
In the run-up to the 22 November election for the Dutch Parliament, the Tweede Kamer, pollsters predicted a tight result. Several parties were competing to become the biggest and potentially deliver the new prime minister after 13 years of Mark Rutte’s hegemony. Very few predicted the landslide win by the
The UN’s International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls on 25 November is a time to face reality: the atrocities of Hamas gunmen in on October 7 included the widespread rape of women and girls. With most of the rape victims subsequently murdered, a full account may
