Section: Prospect (The United Kingdom)
How the west can help Alexei Navalny without damaging his cause
Five months after agents of the FSB, the Russian Security Service, tried to murder him with a Novichok nerve agent, Alexei Navalny returned to Moscow and was immediately arrested. His treatment is not the only instance of the flagrant abuse of human rights which characterises President Putin’s regime. But it is the one which has...
The storming of the US Capitol is not just about Trump, but the whole American right
No sooner had the mob moved on the Capitol than the whole right-wing establishment began to act as if they didn’t know the unruly man who had incited them to do so. It fell to Vice-President Pence, fresh from resisting his boss’s demands to “disappear” the electoral college votes of states that had gone the wrong way, to summon the...
Syrian missile attack: a statement of willingness to use force
A satellite photo of the Shayrat Airfield in Syria, released by the Pentagon ©USA TODAY Network/SIPA USA/PA Images Last night’s US Navy cruise missile bombardment of the Syrian Air Force’s Shayrat airfield near the western city of Homs was, on the face of it, an immediate retaliatory strike against the squadron responsible for...
How should Britain engage with Russia?
Theresa May and Vladimir Putin at a G20 meet in China ©Stefan Rousseau/PA Archive/PA Images When Theresa May visited Donald Trump in January, she also spoke to the Republican caucus about the need to “engage but beware” with regard to Russia. This advice came too late for Trump’s now-former National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, and his...
The Duel: Should we regret the Bolshevik Revolution?
Should we regret the Bolshevik Revolution? Yes No Poll Maker One hundred years ago this spring, there were remarkable events in Russia. But when I was young it was the October Revolution that I was taught about—how it had ushered in the world’s first worker’s state, and constituted the greatest moment in world history. It had, I knew,...
Interview: Svetlana Alexievich—A melody of voices
©Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images In a vast, draughty exhibition centre at the Minsk book fair, hundreds of people stand in line. The queue straggles past the children’s bookstand and around a fake red phone box installed by the British embassy. People have been here for hours. At the other end of the hall, a slight woman sits at a table...
How Britain can still count after it quits
Trump is indifferent to European strength; May is not, and cannot afford to be ©De Keerle/Sipa/Rex/Shutterstock In last year’s interview with the Atlantic, Barack Obama warned that a country that would “resort to nationalism as an organising principle” and that “never takes on the responsibilities of a country its size in maintaining the...
Brexit—take back control
©Archimboldus, Doublebubble Rex/Shutterstock The marriage metaphor is apt. We have not yet taken even the first formal step. But already the decision to begin divorce proceedings with the European Union is clogged with past resentments, fears for the future, and the steady ambivalence that characterised the marriage. It was a finely balanced...
The civil service doesn’t have the skills to negotiate Brexit
©NICHOLAS KRAUSE/NEWZULU/PA Images : Brexit—the biggest challenge the civil service has ever faced? In her speech last week, Prime Minister Theresa May set out the broad outline for Brexit negotiations and one day soon the starting gun will be fired. The course that we are on concerns me because I believe that the civil service does not currently...
Is Tim Barrow just the man for Brexit?
Britain’s new Permanent Representative to the EU, Tim Barrow ©Facundo Arrizabalaga/PA Wire/PA Images Before the start of 2017, few outside the UK’s diplomatic community would have heard of Tim Barrow. His appointment as Britain’s Permanent Representative (ambassador) to the European Union, following the public and acrimonious...
