Showing 1 - 10 of 19
Expect 2019 to test global stability
News, John Lloyd, Published on 03/01/2019
» The resignation of US Defence Secretary James Mattis stands not only as a radical disassociation from the actions of the president he served, but as a foreboding for the future, a warning for 2019 -- and beyond. And, for all the assurances the world is getting better, such as Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now, there are huge geopolitical challenges to face and master to make that optimism real.
The torture of Theresa May as Brexit drama unfolds
News, John Lloyd, Published on 17/12/2018
» Now is the time for all good citizens to put their elected politicians on the rack. Torture is what tyrants visited -- and, often, still visit -- upon real or presumed enemies among their own people. But subjecting their leaders to prolonged public humiliation has come to be a default position among democracies. None knows this better than the United Kingdom's Prime Minister, Theresa May.
Another Brexit vote is a bad idea
News, John Lloyd, Published on 10/12/2018
» In the "careful what you wish for" stakes, few issues rank higher than the plan for a second referendum by those in the UK hoping for a reversal of the country's June 2016 vote to leave the European Union (the "Remainers"). If secured, the outcome could be a fast track to a phenomenon the UK has so far avoided -- the creation of a large, angry populist party, probably of the right and perhaps also of the left.
Midterms resonate across Atlantic
News, John Lloyd, Published on 12/11/2018
» One of the major political messages of the US midterm elections has been that rural voters dominate the cities. While the Democrats made enough gains in urban areas to take control of the House of Representatives, Republicans were able to expand their majority in the Senate, where each state gets two senators regardless of population size. In an election where neither side can claim a sweeping victory, President Donald Trump's party did as well as it did because the small towns and the more sparsely populated rural areas of the United States are still, in the main, Trump country. Meanwhile, Democrat votes pile up in the cities, uselessly, from an electoral point of view.
Beware the online culture warriors
News, John Lloyd, Published on 22/10/2018
» The news media in the Western world remains dominated by newspapers, magazines and broadcasters still known as the mainstream. The most vivid proof of their continued reign over public opinion is in the figure of US President Donald Trump, whose repeated attacks on "failing" publications like The New York Times and the Washington Post as "enemies of the people" is a backhanded tribute to their continued power.
No 'third way' in a polarised Britain
News, John Lloyd, Published on 01/10/2018
» The British prime minister and the leader of Her Majesty's opposition gave speeches on the same day last week, outlining their vision for their country's economy -- and by implication, its society. They had little in common.
Building peace requires pragmatism and patience
News, John Lloyd, Published on 24/09/2018
» Doors are slamming all over the Western world; we shall not see them opened again in our life. This sentiment -- borrowing and adapting a remark attributed to British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey on the eve of World War I (his phrase had lamps going out in Europe) -- seems to me at least as defensible as Grey's prophecy.
Why Macron's 'third way' is now the EU's best option
News, John Lloyd, Published on 17/09/2018
» The largest question in democratic politics in Europe is: who's in charge?
How to save the modern Catholic Church from itself
News, John Lloyd, Published on 03/09/2018
» When the pope is given a cool, even combative, welcome in the Republic of Ireland, the Roman Catholic Church is in trouble. The country had been -- from its founding as the Irish Free State in the early 1920s after a violent break with the United Kingdom -- deeply influenced by Catholic teaching in the framing of its laws and the management of its institutions. It is now solidly secular -- and it has a list of hard questions to put to the Church.
Steve Bannon's boost to Europe's far right parties
News, John Lloyd, Published on 06/08/2018
» The various movements gathered under the name of Europe's "far right" have not risen like a straight line on a graph. There have been -- still are -- lows as well as highs. Yet there is a new sense of purpose, thanks to a new movement -- called "The Movement," and launched by former Donald Trump aide Steve Bannon -- and to Hungarian premier Viktor Orban's call to the right to "concentrate our strength" on the May 2019 elections to the European Parliament.