Section: Prospect (The United Kingdom)
America: the failed state
Trump addresses the 2016 Republican National Convention: “the greatness which Trump promises to regain will not be that which America used to imagine for itself” ©Action Press/Rex/Shutterstock Adam Tooze writes on the birth of the American Century here Donald Trump’s evolution from a buffoonish fringe candidate taken seriously by no one to...
Think Tank Awards 2016: the winners
It is hard to remember a year like it. Brexit, the collapse of the David Cameron’s government and now the election of Donald Trump have sent the political world into a spin. By any measure, 2016 will go down as the graveyard of orthodoxy. The populist surge in the United States, Britain and continental Europe represents a politics that...
Italian constitutional referendum: much ado about nothing?
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi ©Pool Roma2 / IPA/IPA MilestoneMedia/PA Images After the victory of “Leave” in the EU referendum and Donald Trump’s election as US President, Italy’s seems to be lined up as the next domino to fall to populism, with a referendum on constitutional changes scheduled for 4th December. Prime Minister...
Former MI6 Chief: Trump could make Britain safer
Donald Trump and Mike Pence ©Van Tine Dennis/ABACA/ABACA USA/PA Images If President-Elect Donald Trump is really the belligerent isolationist of his campaign rhetoric, then the United Kingdom’s national security is in a very difficult and potentially dangerous place. The two pillars on which our national safety rests are membership of the...
America loses its ardour
President Barack Obama and President Elect Donald Trump shake hands after meeting in the Oval Office on 10th November, 2016. ©Ron Sachs/DPA/PA Images When Franklin Delano Roosevelt outlined his vision of the future in 1944, shortly before winning his fourth presidential term, he committed the United States to “a long and arduous task, which will...
Big Question: Is Donald Trump’s election good news for Britain?
©Richard Drew/AP/Press Association Images On Tuesday, Donald Trump pulled off a stunning upset. The President Elect defied the polls—and dozens of critics within his own party—to win a likely 306 electoral votes. Hillary Clinton is on course to win 232. During the course of his campaign, Trump made a series of highly controversial claims,...
Donald Trump’s America: Welcome to the void
You’re hired: Trump’s image projected on the Empire State Building on the night of his election victory ©Smith/Zuma Wire/Rex/Shutterstock/ In the early hours of 9th November, at the tag-end of perhaps the most improbable election night in history, tens of millions of Americans who had spent a long night absorbed in a heart-stopping...
Trump, NATO and the defence of Europe
Trump supporters cheer as they wait for the president-elect to give his acceptance speech ©Mary Altaffer/AP/Press Association Images Had Hillary Clinton become the 45th president of The United States of America, it would all have been so simple. She would have been a president who had been part of the institutional furniture for 30 years who was...
Big question: What is Putin’s aim in Aleppo?
Aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov—one of several Russian war ships thought to be part of a coming bombardment on Aleppo ©Gareth Fuller/PA Wire/PA Images Earlier this week, news of a planned “full scale” assault on Aleppo, Syria’s second city, surfaced. An intelligence source told The Times that they expect a “crescendo of air attacks on...
Moscow vs Merkiavelli
“The former KGB officer had done his homework. He knew Merkel was frightened of dogs” ©DMITRY ASTAKHOV/AFP/GETTY IMAGES Both leaders sat down in the Russian President’s office at his Black Sea dacha for a press conference. The door had been left slightly ajar and it was soon clear why. From the corner of her eye Angela Merkel, the German...
