Accidents of history: is the EU finally coming of age?

The advocates of Brexit, Farage, Johnson, Gove and their ilk, couldn’t have foreseen ten years ago, how profoundly the world has changed. Human history is replete with change, both geopolitical and technological; sometimes it happens slowly over centuries, sometimes quickly and violently. Timing is often a key element and crucial. In the late 1970s, the scientist and historian James Burke, fronted a TV series called Connections, which showed how big technological changes to society were frequently the result of complex relationships between various chance discoveries. I think in the future historians will look back on Brexit and see that it too came about because of unfortunate timing and chance.

The tectonic plates are shifting

EU leaders are starting to lay the foundations for a more resilient and self-reliant Europe, one that can look both the USA and China in the eye. There is the beginning of a “buy European” policy to protect “strategic sectors” of European industry. At a summit in Belgium, member states have been discussing how to ensure the continent punches its proper weight in a more volatile global economy. There is already a programme to fund and manufacture more strategic defence equipment following the Ukraine war, but the focus is also moving to include AI and clean technology, and no doubt other sectors will follow. 

Talking the talk on Brexit

David Henig, an expert on trade who writes extensively on Brexit, has a nice piece on the Best for Britain website that neatly sets out the conundrum Britain has faced for years. That is how to get frictionless trade with our nearest and richest market while retaining the right to total sovereignty over our own market rules, with full control over immigration policy and without making sizeable contributions to EU funds. Labour is now wrestling with the issue, but the so-called 'reset' only reveals that we haven't yet come to terms with what Brexit means. Mr Henig points out that Britain's trade policy has failed and that joining the EU's customs union is not the answer.

Labour: A leadership challenge is coming

It’s hard not to feel sympathy for Kier Starmer. He fired Peter Mandelson as our US ambassador in September last year when leaked emails from the US House of Representatives Oversight Committee first revealed he had sent supportive messages to Jeffrey Epstein during his 2008 prosecution and referred to him as his "best pal.” Five months later, Starmer himself is now coming under huge political pressure for appointing him in the first place. I’m not sure what else he could have done. People now accusing the PM of exercising poor judgment over Mandelson all seemed to think his appointment was a good one at the time. Starmer wasn't popular before last week's details emerged, and you can't help but feel Mandelson's behaviour over a decade ago is just a handy cudgel to beat him with.

Brexit: a hopeless case

This year will mark the tenth anniversary of David Cameron’s attempt to shoot UKIP’s fox and the ill-fated referendum on leaving the EU that he tried to use. We will also be able to recall all the lies told by Brexiters ten years ago as the campaign got underway. Of all the words spoken about Brexit since the starting gun was fired, those of  German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble in June 2016 still ring true: "In is in. Out is out", emphasising that the UK couldn't retain single market benefits without accepting EU obligations. Ever since the vote, we have been trying to find ways to prove that Schäuble was wrong. And we have comprehensively failed.

Epstein was Putin's "wealth manager"

A lot of extraordinary stuff is coming out of the Epstein files released recently by the US Department of Justice, as Lord Mandelson is learning to his cost. Journalists the world over are descending like a plague of locusts on the three million pages published on the DoJ website detailing correspondence between Epstein and various well-known individuals. The FT are picking over Mandelson's involvement with Epstein while the Daily Mail is focusing on what it describes, with some justification, as a KGB 'honeytrap'. Epstein amassed an $800 million fortune between 1999 and 2018 through various tax avoidance scams, investments and fees, although it's not entirely clear exactly how he did it. What I find extraordinary is the list of rich, powerful and influential people all over the world that he knew intimately.

A week of chaos in Trumpland

America under Donald Trump looks like it’s having a collective nervous breakdown. One unhinged man is turning the world’s most powerful country inside out, hammering the truth, facts and reality itself into the shape of a dysfunctional banana Republic. The checks and balances that the founding fathers built into the US Constitution - the one that citizens swear allegiance to all the time - have proved to be nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Things that would have shocked and scandalised the country before 2016 are now so commonplace that they barely get a mention and are swiftly buried under the avalanche of new outrages.

Trump's polling numbers show he's losing middle America

Peter Kellner at YouGov has produced some interesting polling about Donald Trump and his plummeting ratings. The US is a nation divided, politically and economically, and has been ever since the Republic began. He says roughly a third of voters are Republicans and a third are Democrats. They tend to be fiercely loyal to their party’s candidate, 94-95% supporting either Biden or Trump in 2020, for example. But, as usual, it’s the swing voters, especially in the swing states, the so-called middle America, who really decide the outcome of US elections, and Trump is burning through this section of the electorate at a rate of knots.

America's descent into lawlessness increases pace

The killing of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis earlier this month by federal agents working for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was absolutely horrific. On Saturday, we saw another killing by ICE agents in the same city. Alex Pretti was a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs hospital. He went to the aid of a woman and was pushed to the ground by six masked men, disarmed and summarily executed. The videos, and there are several, are so shocking that most TV stations cut the images a few moments before one of the agents fires multiple shots into him while he’s helpless on the floor.

Trump: Making America Grate Again

Donald Trump flew to the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, essentially to deliver his standard interminable campaign rant to a gathering of baffled world leaders and members of the press. He interspersed his speech, if that’s the right word, with boasts about his achievements and threats to annex Greenland - or was it Iceland? Nobody seemed sure, least of all Trump. America, in his fevered imagination, swings effortlessly from being the most powerful nation in the history of the world to one which is constantly taken advantage of by other lesser countries. The US is both victim and victor at the same time. One moment he’s boasting of taking in trillions of dollars and being the hottest country on the planet, and the next complaining that it’s not enough.