Section: New Statesman (The United Kingdom)
Why the Republican Party can’t – or won’t – dump Trump
With all but five Republican senators voting to scrap his second impeachment trial, the former president’s grip on the GOP is stronger than ever. Donald Trump is out of the White House, but his power over the Republican Party appears to be intact. On 8 February Trump’s second Senate impeachment trial will start. The first time Trump...
On the steppe
Torn between China and Russia, and haunted by the ghosts of its communist past, Kazakhstan has taken an authoritarian turn. Just before Christmas 2020, the Russian Duma passed a number of amendments tightening its notorious “Foreign Agent” law, which targets civil society groups receiving charitable funding from abroad. The label “foreign agent”...
Why Europe’s Covid-19 vaccine problems go beyond supply
Even after it vaccinates its own population, the EU may have no option but to toughen up its external borders significantly. Last week, as concerns about EU access to Covid-19 vaccine supply continued to escalate, the European Commission hastily U-turned on an ill-judged decision to impose export controls on vaccines to Northern Ireland. But...
The Bad Statesmen
How the UK government’s failure to learn the lessons of history pushed the country deeper into crisis. Humankind has always been at the mercy of pandemic outbreaks of infectious disease. Historians have recorded them in detail, from the plague that devastated Athens in 430 BCE, causing the death of perhaps a quarter of the city’s...
How should we remember the Holocaust?
Why the plan for a new national memorial in Westminster is causing such division. As we approach Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January – the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army in 1945 – we might spare a thought for the unsung David Morgan. He is the planning inspector whose task it is to make a recommendation to Robert...
Can Joe Biden restore America?
The US faces a crisis of reputation on the world stage and of democracy at home. The burden now falls on the new president to rebuild his nation. Two notable events took place in the United States on 13 January. First, Joe Biden announced he intended to nominate Samantha Power to head the US Agency for International Development. Power, who won a...
What will Joe Biden bring to the US-Russia relationship?
Despite Donald Trump’s chummy attitude towards Vladimir Putin, relations have deteriorated between the two countries. Will much change under the next president? The final weeks of the Trump administration included a piece of news. A company called SolarWinds, based in Texas, was used as the foothold for what may have been the largest-ever...
In January, I made ten predictions for 2020 – how did they turn out?
An end-of-year report card for our international editor’s preview of the year. On 5 January, I published a preview of 2020 in world affairs. In it, I posed ten crucial questions about the year ahead, described the factors that I thought would decide each and in each case offered a prediction. I concluded with a pledge to return to these at...
We have to keep our promise to the world’s poorest – and save the 0.7 per cent aid target
Our commitment to global Britain lies not only in increasing defence spending, but also in keeping our promises on international development, says Conservative MP Bob Seely. As Joe Biden’s administration prepares for the White House, a new era of global multilateralism may be about to begin. Simultaneously, Britain is less than a month away...
We have to keep our promise to the world’s poorest – and save the 0.7 per cent target
Our commitment to global Britain is not only in our welcome increase in defence spending, but also in keeping our promises on international development, says Conservative MP Bob Seely. As Joe Biden’s administration prepares for the White House, a new era of global multilateralism may be about to begin. Simultaneously, Britain is less than a...
