• News & article

  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.

• News & article

  Trump's Iran nuclear decision strains US-Europe ties

  Oped, John Lloyd, Published on 14/05/2018

  » Does Europe still have a partner, a big brother across the water? One which can be a scold, a nag, an annoyance, a puzzle -- but which has always been there for it? A partner that is also a protector, with a military and security network of unrivalled power and reach? Is the United States still that partner?

• News & article

  Merkel sets direction for Europe

  News, John Lloyd, Published on 11/09/2017

  » Germans will choose a government on Sept 24, and that government is likely to be headed, for the twelfth year running, by Angela Merkel. The uncharismatic 63-year-old from East Germany may not have captured her fellow Germans' hearts, but she has appealed so strongly to their rational selves that polls suggest they find no reason to replace her.

• News & article

  Britain's current mess extends well beyond Brexit

  News, John Lloyd, Published on 13/11/2017

  » Britain -- ever-ready to boast stable politics and a faultless, often-called "Rolls-Royce" civil service -- is in a mess. Between scandals over sex, secret meetings, political donors and the royal family, the government is melting down.

• News & article

  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.

• News & article

  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.

• News & article

  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.

• News & article

  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.

• News & article

  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?

• News & article

  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.

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