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Dispatches from the corridors of British power
Much of the traditional British media seems to be wilfully missing the political story that lies behind the attempts to save the Eurozone from itself. The Right wing media is banging a Eurosceptic drum, replete with pictures of assorted loonies burning EU flags. Meanwhile much of the liberal ...
Occupy St Paul’s! This isn’t the slogan of those who have followed in the wake of the Wall Street protestors, but London’s eponymous cathedral is now surrounded by a tent city of anti capitalist protestors. In truth, there just isn’t the room outside the Bank of England, or the ‘Old Lady of ...
Before history is quickly re-written and the essentials forgotten, the vote that took on Monday night in the House of Commons on whether British voters should be allowed a referendum on membership of the European Union came about because a petition of over one hundred thousand electors demanding ...
More form Mark Seddon's new book; 'Standing for Something - Life in the Awkward Squad', published this week, is available by buying the book http://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/Standing%20for%20Something/ March 2011: Perched in the offices of 'Big Think', just up from the Flat ...
A former British Prime Minister, James Callaghan will forever be remembered for the words ‘Crisis? What crisis?’ eventhough he never actually said them. Callaghan had the misfortune of having his ever so slightly complacent remarks on his country’s dire economic situation turned into tabloid-ese in ...
Sir Brian Urquhart, one of the oldest surviving senior UN staff members, reminded us recently in an article in the New York Times that a former Secretary General of the UN, Dag Hammarskjold, had once said; “The United Nations was not created to bring us heaven, but to save us from hell”. Those wise ...
[This article appeared in the Daily Mail] The British people understand what politicians and diplomats euphemistically refer to as ‘realpolitik’. They accept that sometimes their leaders have to sit down with the most appalling despots, to sup with the devil as it were, for the greater ...
EVEN President George Bush played lip service to the idea of a ‘two State’ solution for Israel/Palestine. That, after all, is the default position of the international community. It is also the position of the Obama administration, which has nonetheless allowed the Israeli government of Benjamin ...
It simply beggars belief that there are some in the British media who still take the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, even vaguely seriously. On Friday, we were treated to two ‘exclusives’ featuring Blair; on the front pages of The Times and the the Daily Mirror. All this in the same week ...
New York, or rather Manhattan, has been part and parcel of my life for over a decade. It is stimulating, sophisticated, and a city where truly anything is possible. But it is also in parts a curious mixture of first and third Worlds, for this has historically been a city where waves of immigrants ...
Former Prime Minister, Tony Blair and former UK Foreign Secretaries Jack Straw and David Miliband, now face some extremely tough questions as to how much they knew about the extraordinary rendition of prisoners to Libya where they were tortured. The discovery of some extraordinary archives in the ...
As soon as commentators began to refer to the popular uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East as the ‘Arab Spring’, I began to worry that the near universal optimism that had accompanied the revolts might be misplaced. Remember the Prague Spring? In 1968, Alexander Dubcek’s attempt to ...
The economic crisis is proving useful for those who want to see the European Union make the final and logical leap to becoming a unitary state, with a single currency and a single government. That is what some of the Euro-sceptics of Left and Right have been saying, but because they have been ...
We live in the age of instant punditry, and I am as guilty of it as anyone else. On the basis of having reported from inside Libya three or four times from the early 1990s onwards, some UK media stations have had me on as a commentator. But what can I draw upon, other than some prior knowledge of ...
When President Bashar al Assad was elected (unopposed) in 2000, many in the West heralded this as progress. Assad’s father in law, Fahwaz - who I came to know - was a Harley Street doctor in London. Assad himself was young, metropolitan and talked of reform. It was possible to dare to hope that the ...