Today Jimmy Lai, founder of the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, sees his thousandth day in prison. But the shadow of the Chinese security state stretches much, much further.
Pakistan has long been one of our largest aid recipients, and between 2015 and 2019 Pakistan was the largest single recipient of direct British government-to-government bilateral aid. Yet its courts uphold forced marriages arranged by kidnapping.
s the world’s centre of economic gravity shifts eastwards, it is projected to be generating more than half of global growth by 2050. So we’re building more diverse supply chains, reducing our dependence on hostile powers, and establishing partnerships in cutting-edge technologies.
Biden’s policy would have the perverse effect of strengthening the regime just when it is under most pressure, leaving it free to fund Hezbollah, supply drones to Russia and otherwise destabilise the region.
The run up to a presidential election is brutal, polarised, and often dark. But it is also energising, passionate, and the greatest political show on earth.
Opportunities to do useful spying (as opposed to covert PR) in the employ of a backbench MP seem extremely limited. Doing the politicians’ thinking for them, on the other hand…
The objective seems to be to help it survive and to stay in the fight (with perhaps 70,000 dead already), but not for it to win back its lost territories in a timely manner.
Political instability in America related to the legal cases against Donald Trump is the kind of phenomenon that a nation unfamiliar with democracy can misconstrue as weakness.
A better future is always possible. But it cannot not involve an impoverished Britain pleading for a cut of hydrocarbons from a regime which cares nothing for its own citizens, never mind ours.
There are lively independence movements all over the Federation; local elites are preparing for a clean excision, a chance to join the comity of nations as (in many cases) resource-rich republics.
Whether it is foreigners at risk in China from the regime’s injustice – and “hostage diplomacy” – or the threat to our institutions at home, we need to wake up to the dangers of the Beijing dragon.
In the wake of what seems to have been a fraught NATO summit, the Defence Secretary’s words are a reminder that public opinion in key nations is not so strongly behind the war as it is in Britain.
Joe Biden’s visit is a reminder that slavish enthusiasts for the American alliance and the most splenetic critics of the President can be equally embarrassing. Is a little Gaullist self-respect too much to ask?
With war ranging in Europe and the bulk of Russia’s fighting capacity deployed in a NATO-adjacent country, now is not the time for playing dated grievance politics with the transatlantic alliance.
Fortunately, there are plenty of half-completed measures ministers could see through in time for the next election, from recognising product standards to locking in new trade deals.