Section: New Statesman (The United Kingdom)
If they are to stay impartial, UN agencies in Yemen must reject Saudi coalition funding
Agencies like the World Food Program and UNICEF accepting Saudi funding in Yemen is tantamount to unwittingly abetting the coalition’s war effort and the resultant humanitarian crisis. Florence Nightingale, the modern nursing pioneer famed for her work with injured soldiers during the Crimean War, was surprisingly critical of Swiss...
The illusions of the 1990s have been shattered but the decade is still distorting world politics
The future has turned out to be nothing like the optimists of that decade supposed. The 1990s was a decade of grand optimism. This hope appeared grounded in the Soviet Union’s fall, the subordination of Chinese communism to raising living standards and the domestic absence of radical politics. Many assumed that the future would be peaceful,...
The absurd and frivolous G7 summit signalled the end of the world order
The elite of every country is increasingly out of control. For a group of people supposedly craving the return of great power politics, the leaders at the G7 meeting in Biarritz looked remarkably crap at it. There was romance – Melania’s swoon over Justin Trudeau; there was comedy – Johnson and Trump on the stairs. And there was even drama,...
From Facebook to Vote Leave: how we entered into a war against reality
How information is weaponised in our divided age. In 2001, a year out of university, Peter Pomerantsev moved to Moscow. Working as a TV producer, he saw first-hand how public opinion was exposed to a “fog of disinformation”, how “spectacle had pushed out sense”. After returning to the UK in 2010, Pomerantsev wrote a series of articles, and then a...
Jack Straw’s The English Job is timely, revealing account of his time in Iran
The former foreign secretary seeks to explain Iran’s deep suspicion of Britain. “The job is always an English job” goes the Iranian phrase that Jack Straw has borrowed for the title of his new book. It reflects, he says, the widespread Iranian suspicion that “we are some unseen, all-pervasive influence on life and events in Iran”. You...
Why liberals now believe in conspiracies
How could the most rational ruling elite in history have fallen for the most dangerous toxin in politics? Until quite recently the liberal position was that there are no conspiracies – none, at any rate, of any historical importance. History consisted of long periods of chaos and stupidity, with occasional intervals when rational figures such as...
The new liberal conspiracies
How could – by their own estimation – the most rational ruling elite in history have failed to comprehend the world around them? Until quite recently the liberal position was that there are no conspiracies – none, at any rate, of any historical importance. History consisted of long periods of chaos and stupidity, with occasional intervals when...
The Victoria delusion
In her bicentenary year interest in Queen Victoria is greater than ever: but she was almost entirely uneducated and understood neither her people nor the constitution, and her greatest achievement was to live for so long The British have made the 19th century synonymous with Queen Victoria to the point where some appear to think she was an...
Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky cannot be a servant of the people and of oligarchy
Accusations of bribery and attacks on central bank independence are testing the sincerity of the president’s pledge to end corruption. With his party in majority control of parliament following a second landslide election victory in four months, the country’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, now has unprecedented freedom to deliver...
Capitalism: the road to world domination
In his history of capitalism’s rise, Donald Sassoon argues that for the economic system to work both the state and the population must accept its drawbacks as well as its benefit. The Anxious Triumph is a big book of comparative history stretching across a global canvas. Written by Donald Sassoon, an emeritus professor at Queen Mary,...
