• OPINION

  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.

• OPINION

  How the Catalonia vote threatens the EU

  News, John Lloyd, Published on 06/11/2017

  » The struggles for and against independence in the Spanish province of Catalonia are emblematic of the European Union's present strength and its future weakness. They also display the weaknesses, present and future, of the two leaders of the contending parties: Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister and Carles Puigdemont, president of Catalonia.

• OPINION

  2019 ushers in era of state control

  News, John Lloyd, Published on 07/01/2019

  » A signature theme of the new year is the possibility of a malign confrontation between the world's greatly enhanced capacity for electronic surveillance and the weakening of democratic control. The antidote to that risk is the democratic spirit and civil freedoms -- both of which are suffering worldwide. These are not dead, but they are unwell, at times untended.

• OPINION

  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.

• OPINION

  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.

• OPINION

  Migrant misery spans worldwide

  News, John Lloyd, Published on 25/06/2018

  » It's an increasingly hard world for those seeking a better life in richer countries. Immigrants aren't welcome in most states, even where demographic trends reflect the need to expand the labor force to levels able to sustain and support aging populations.

• OPINION

  Why Putin is still – genuinely – popular in Russia

  News, John Lloyd, Published on 22/03/2018

  » Vladimir Putin won big on Sunday. According to the central election commission, the Russian president glides into his fourth term after winning his biggest-ever election victory, with nearly 77% favouring him. His nearest rival was an affluent multi-millionaire communist who got more than 11% by presenting himself as a Putin-plus, with a programme of nationalising the oligarchs' property instead of merely controlling it.

• OPINION

  Democracy is key for uniting disparate Europe

  News, John Lloyd, Published on 08/01/2018

  » The European political year, grinding back into gear for 2018, is full of doubt, even woe. In the continent's major countries politics are stuck, or likely to stick, in cul-de-sacs from which exit is difficult. Only in France, under the banner not so much of the tricolour as the injunction En Marche! (Let's Go!), is there official optimism and vigour.

• OPINION

  From Guernica's ruins, emerges a lesson in fake news

  News, John Lloyd, Published on 11/12/2017

  » A little over 80 years ago, on April 26, 1937, German and Italian warplanes bombed the Basque town of Guernica, razing much of it. Italian planes targeted a bridge, while the German Condor legion hit the town with conventional and incendiary bombs, and machine-gunned men, women and children as they ran from the burning town.

• OPINION

  Xi's new power won't stop expressions of dissent

  News, John Lloyd, Published on 30/10/2017

  » Xi Jinping -- president of China, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, chairman of the Central Military Commission, chief of the military's Joint Operations Command Centre, chairman of the committees on cyber security, economics and finance among others -- has a new honour that will linger long after he leaves office.

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