Section: Prospect (The United Kingdom)
Editorial: the big ideas of 2015
As we move into the holiday season and around the turn of the year, we offer you our view of the big ideas that will shape 2015. We proved prescient in many of last year’s ones, such as the debate about “secular stagnation,” the “politics of protest,” and the increasing clash between Sunni and Shia Muslims in the Middle East (even if “the...
Duel: Should we scrap the Human Rights Act?
Our panellists Dominic Grieve (right, no) and Martin Howe (left, yes) Should we scrap the Human Rights Act? The United Kingdom ratified the European Convention on Human Rights in 1953, and the Human Rights Act 1998 incorporated it into domestic law, saying that British courts must “take into account” the decisions made at Strasbourg. But UK...
The big ideas of 2015
What ideas will shape Britain and the world in the coming year? © David Ryle We live in extraordinary times. This makes a nonsense of the term “developed world”—implying that the story, in the countries of the west, is all told. That notion is confounded by the scale of the change through which we are living, in politics, economics and...
Big ideas of 2015: friends in strange places
The rise of Islamic State has thrown foreign policy in the Middle East into turmoil Read the rest of our big ideas of 2015 The turmoil in the Middle East and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have done strange things to alliances, not least to the ones that gelled—sort of—after the collapse of the Soviet Union a quarter of a century ago. Hopes...
Big ideas of 2015: the year of two pivots
Russia is beginning to turn East, towards China Read the rest of our big ideas of 2015 2015 will be a year of two pivots. Russia is performing the first, turning east towards China, away from Europe. Sanctions imposed by the west after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the plunging oil price, have hit the Russian economy hard. In November,...
Daily Briefing: The best of today’s papers
David Cameron will make a significant speech on Europe Beware the march of IDS and his gothic folly (The Times) Iain Duncan Smith’s wildly overambitious reform of the benefit system is poor policy—and poorly implemented, says Philip Collins. Fear of immigration is no reason for Britain to leave Europe (Financial Times) Hard-working,...
Why did Obama push Chuck Hagel out?
US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has resigned The announcement earlier this week that Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel would be leaving his post was something of a surprise, because it represents a gamble on the part of a normally cautious White House. President Obama’s team is betting that replacing its third Defense Secretary at a time of...
