World

The BBC are reporting that unleaded petrol has now reached 130p per litre and are blaming Libya. I¹m not convinced. Libya only accounts for about 2.3 percent of global oil production and even now the Arabian Gulf Oil Co¹s production in east Libya is around a third of normal levels. The real cause of the current price increase seems to be Twitter and Facebook. The social networking sites are allowing protestors to organise uprisings with a sophistication and speed which have taken analysts completely by surprise. Increased oil prices are the market¹s response to all this uncertainty and the possibility of this revolutionary fervour spreading. It’s not unreasonable: after all,

The greatest political, as opposed to strategic, threat to the coalition from the Libya evacuation crisis was that it would give the government a reputation for incompetence. As I say in the Mail on Sunday, Labour are looking to pin the incompetence charge to the coalition at every possible opportunity. The Miliband team knows that if the coalition comes to be seen as incompetent, then it is done for. Once a government comes to be seen as incompetent, then it is almost impossible for it to gain support for any of its proposals as even those who agree with the ideas don’t trust the government to implement them. Equally, any

I’m in the Middle East, albeit in a revolution-free corner. And from the Royal Meridien hotel in Abu Dhabi it is hard to know what the region is going through. But a number of points have already come through from my conversations. First, there is an obsession about US power. The government-controlled media are busy saying that US influence is waning but every conversation focuses on what the US will or will not do. The US is clearly present ­ and although its power may be changing, it is doing so more slowly than the newspaper headlines would have you believe. The second thing is this: the Middle East will

We now know that Libya is heading into a full on civil-war and that Gaddafi is prepared to do pretty much anything to stay in power. The former interior minister Abdel Fattah Younes al-Abid, admittedly a partial source, says that he defected after arguing with the Libyan leader over his plan to bomb the rebel stronghold of Benghzai. In an ideal world, the United Nations would move to impose a no fly zone on Libya. But this is unlikely to happen. Russia and China, for obvious reasons, want to uphold the principle of non-interference in another state’s affairs even if that state is brutally repressing its own people.   This

Tonight, Libya appears to be on the verge of a full on civil-war. The interior minister has defected to the opposition and urged the army to do likewise. The interior minister has also warned that there are half a million mercenaries in Libya under Gaddafi’s orders. This seems further grim confirmation of just how far Gaddafi is prepared to go to hang onto power. If Gaddafii does step up his campaign of violence against his own people it raises the question of what the international community can—and should—do. There’ll be some who say that this is no one but Libya’s business. But this argument is flawed strategically as well as

There’s an intriguing Sky News report this evening which suggests that the Libyan Army might be about to turn away from Gaddafi. The channel is reporting that soldiers in the second city of Benghazi have turned from the regime and have told locals that they have ‘liberated’ the city. If the bulk of the military abandon him, then Gaddafi is done for. This combined with the news that the demonstrations have spread to Tripoli and that several of the tribes are joining the cause suggests that the revolution is Libya is gaining momentum. Certainly, the live resignation of the Libyan Ambassador to China live on air indicates that the governing