Section: New Statesman (The United Kingdom)
Why the Internal Market Bill makes a no-deal Brexit much more likely
A change to the Irish border protocol would not be a “limited” tweak to international law. How unusual is the government’s plan to break international law in a “specific and limited way” with the Internal Market Bill, and is the government really planning to do it? Those are the questions being raised in today’s papers, and by MPs,...
US democracy in peril: will disinformation decide the 2020 election?
Individuals will be the main line of defence against online misinformation. We will likely remember the 2020 US election as “the coronavirus election”: the campaign season when the usual pageantry of rallies, conventions and canvassing evaporated into the air we were all suddenly fearful to breathe. Instead, campaigning has been relegated to the...
The politics of the spice rack: Russia’s love of dill
Each jar and packet in the kitchen is part of a wider story, involving geography, culture and politics. Let’s face facts: dill has a bad reputation. Lacking the romance of basil or the sophistication of rosemary, this sweet, pungent herb will be familiar to anyone who’s eaten a pickle, or maybe tried gravlax. In the West, its usage...
The bully of Belarus: will Russia intervene to save Alexander Lukashenko?
Military intervention would turn most Belarusians against their larger neighbour – but the Kremlin could decide intervention to prop up its closest ally is worth the risk. Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus’s embattled dictator, never wanted to be a citizen of Belarus. The former chairman of a collective farm was the only member of the Supreme...
From Belarus to Lebanon, the US to Thailand, righteous moral outrage is sweeping the globe
Anger, it can seem, is everywhere. It spreads faster than ever. It is viral, but unlike coronavirus cannot be socially distanced into abeyance. Its roots are deep. Amid demonstrations over Belarus’s fraudulent election, President Alexander Lukashenko tried to bolster his position with a public appearance on 17 August. It did not go well....
Belarus looks to Russia as anti-Lukashenko protests build
Why the likelihood of Russian military intervention remains remote, but not out of the question. An extraordinary week in Belarus was topped off by the largest opposition rally in the history of the country on Sunday, 16 August, a week after widely-disputed elections saw President Alexander Lukashenko returned with 80 per cent of the vote,...
From the NS Archive: We must drift: a letter from Joseph Conrad
1 June 1935: Where’s the man to stop the rush of social, democratic idiocy? Joseph Conrad was born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in 1857 to ethnically Polish parents living in western Ukraine. After a time in the British merchant navy, “Conrad” became a British citizen in 1886. The following letter was written the previous year at a time...
Ten ways to ensure a more geopolitically active and relevant Europe
The EU’s concern with its own stability during Covid-19 has come at the expense of its focus on the wider world. On the morning of Tuesday 21 July, the European Council president Charles Michel issued a one-word tweet: “Deal”. This marked the conclusion of four days of intense negotiations resulting in the EU’s €750bn...
Of course Russia interferes in British politics. The question is: what do we do about it?
From my time on the defence select committee, that Russian disinformation would be deployed in our elections and the referendum is no great shock, says Phil Wilson. In the early hours of 13 December, after I had thanked all those who needed to be thanked at the count for administering the general election and those who helped my own campaign, I...
In a new war of all against all, the UK needs a defence revolution
Rather than grandstanding as a global military power, Britain must respond to direct threats. Announced to fanfare last December, the government’s sweeping review of security, defence and foreign policy was put on hold in April – for the obvious reason that Covid-19 changes everything. In the meantime, the People’s Republic of China...
