Showing 1 - 10 of 19
Despite Brexit turmoil, I'm proud to be a Brit
News, John Lloyd, Published on 21/01/2019
» This is a fine time to be British. Indeed, to be proud to be British.
No, Brexit Britain doesn't want its empire back
News, John Lloyd, Published on 14/01/2019
» Britain is moving towards an exit from the European Union on March 29, possibly with no agreement, and thus courting – according to the Bank of England – an 8 percent drop in GDP and a 7.5% rise in unemployment. A drear prospect, attended by matching drear commentaries on the stupidity of the 52 percent of the British electorate who voted for Brexit in 2016.
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.
Struggling with the prolonged torture that is Brexit
News, John Lloyd, Published on 19/11/2018
» BBC political correspondent Chris Mason stood outside of the mother of parliaments last Monday morning and said he didn't have the "foggiest idea" about where Brexit is going. Then he made what have been described as "exasperated noises" -- and promptly became an online viral sensation.
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.
Politics of confrontation heats up
News, John Lloyd, Published on 15/10/2018
» The next president of Brazil, Latin America's giant, is all but certain to be former army captain Jair Bolsonaro -- who was relatively unknown, even in his own country, just a few months ago, but who now has a large public profile all round the world. At 63, he has spent years in public life, leaving a mark -- but not a large one -- as a man of the far right, ready with insults for women who oppose him, disgusted by homosexuality, approving of the military dictatorship that killed and tortured leftists between 1964 and 1985.
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?
Imagining a post-Putin Russia
News, John Lloyd, Published on 27/08/2018
» It's not the week to say it, but Donald Trump has a point. It isn't original and what it proposes will be hard to do, yet when he says that "getting along with Russia is a good thing", as he did before his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki last month, he isn't wrong.