Blair or Churchill: who told the truth?
Can Tony Blair really be compared to Winston Churchill? A recent talk by Mr Blair’s former communications chief Alastair Campbell noted that Winston Churchill actively and shamelessly engaged in deception …
summits
Lessons from Libor for EMU
The European Council meeting has reached yet another agreement that will solve the EU’s financial crisis, this time relating to banking supervision. (Read about it here.) Mark Twain said something …
No globalisation without representation
That the protestors outside St Paul’s cathedral are critical of global capitalism should not be surprise. Doesn’t everybody object to the way in which what was effectively gambling in unregulated …
Asleep on the job
This blog has commented in the past on the impact of sleep and tiredness on political decision-making, and it is interesting to see the same phenomenon arise elsewhere. The practice …
G20: they came, they saw, they concurred
London has regularly played host to foreign leaders. From Julius Caesar onwards, the banks of the Thames have been visited by the same figures that bestride the world stage. The …
The EU gets the wrong farm deal
EU farm ministers never tire of discussing the Common Agricultural Policy. The latest negotiations concluded in the early hours of Thursday morning, over the so-called CAP healthcheck. The aim was …
Damage to democracy
A meeting of the International European Movement was held this weekend in Berlin. I was there as a British delegate and also because the UEF bureau was meeting in parallel. …
Supranationalism
One of the first things I learned about the etiquette of debating politics on the internet was that the first person to mention Hitler is deemed to have lost the …
Blair’s reliance on summits is misplaced
By Richard Laming Tony Blair’s recent comments that next year’s EU summit in Barcelona will be “make or break” inspire nothing so much as foreboding. For the record of summits …