The Weekend Essay

It’s a dinner party in Brussels and I try to turn the conversation to the war in Ukraine. My host is having none of it. She is determined to initiate another round of discussion on the theme of ‘isn’t Britain a basket case?’ From bitter experience I know that I am in for a lengthy diatribe about ‘nothing works’ Britain.  At times it feels as if there is a veritable crusade targeting Britain. Media outlets on both sides of the Atlantic constantly refer to Britain as if it is a country in the throes of an existential breakdown.  All these critics hold that it is wrong, even shameful for the British people to take pride in their culture and their past ‘Britain

The World Economic Forum (WEF) and its long-serving founder and Executive Chairman, Professor Klaus Schwab, are the subjects of many insane conspiracy theories. This NGO, which again this January will bring together politicians, business leaders, journalists, academics, and assorted celebrities in Davos, has been accused, among other things, of being a secret cabal of paedophiles who used the Covid-19 pandemic to harvest children’s blood so as to hasten in a Satanic New World Order. It isn’t mad, however, to regard the WEF as a dangerous force in global politics. The WEF is a dangerous force in global politics. To adapt Joseph Heller, just because you are paranoid, doesn’t mean the WEF isn’t after you. A shared distrust of

In the glitzy Fifa museum, in squeaky-clean downtown Zurich, there is a new exhibition which sums up the upbeat, inclusive image which football’s world governing body is so eager to portray. It’s called ‘211 Cultures – One Game’, and it consists of 211 items of football ephemera, one from each of Fifa’s member associations all around the world. Most of these items are fairly anodyne: trophies, fan regalia, football shirts and suchlike – curios you tend to find in any sports museum. A few are items of genuine historical interest: the Spanish contribution is a table football set, invented during the Spanish Civil War by a Spaniard called Alejandro Finisterre,

Has the reputation of any American statesman been more effectively trashed than that of Richard Milhous Nixon? Donald Trump’s, perhaps – certainly the forty-fifth president inspires loathing on a scale matched only by the thirty-seventh. Nixon and Trump have a few other points in common. Both men built coalitions through appeals to forgotten voters. They spoke to Americans who were frightened by rapid and destructive social and economic change. Both were denounced as fascists and standard bearers of the most reactionary forces in American life, yet in fact both governed with substantial moderation. Nixon and Trump prove the truth of Marx’s quip that history repeats itself first as tragedy, then

It has been a remarkable few days for China’s increasingly absurd and at times chilling zero-Covid campaign. There was outrage on social media after the death of a three-year-old boy from carbon monoxide poisoning, which his father blamed on delays obtaining treatment because of a lockdown. Angry residents who took to the streets were confronted by riot police. While videos from the world’s largest iPhone factory in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou, where 350,000 are employed, showed workers scaling barricades in what amounted to a mass break-out following attempts to lock them in their dormitories after a Covid outbreak. A surge in cases across the country has seen restrictions

Benito Mussolini, the revolutionary socialist inventor of fascism who came to power 100 years ago this week, was one of the most talked about figures of his day. Most of that talk was positive. Pope Pius XI called him ‘a gift from Providence’ to save Italy; the US ambassador to Rome, Washburn Child, ‘the greatest figure of his sphere and time’; and Winston Churchill, ‘the Roman genius’. Anita Loos, author of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, wrote that he gave their epoque ‘its only flame of greatness’, and Cole Porter even wrote him into his 1934 hit song ‘You’re the Top!’ with a line that went: ‘You’re the Top! You’re the great Houdini! You’re

Markets, we are told, are rebelling against the government’s irresponsible fiscal policy, not least the now-abandoned plan to abolish the 45p tax rate. If that is what they are doing, it marks a sharp change in their behaviour. For most of the past decade they have whooped with delight whenever a fantastically expensive stimulus package has been announced and gone into a sulk whenever there have been rumours that the punch bowl is about to be withdrawn. In this Alice in Wonderland world, good news became bad and bad news became good. Why? Because bad news means greater likelihood of a stimulus package; good news means stimulus is likely to

In the historic heart of Riga, Latvia’s lively capital, there is a building that reveals why the Baltic States remain so wary of the Russian Bear. From the street, it doesn’t look like much – just another apartment block on a busy boulevard full of shops and cafes. Only the discreet sign outside gives the game away: ‘During the Soviet occupation the KGB imprisoned, tortured, killed and morally humiliated its victims in this building.’ Most passers-by barely give it a second glance. They know this story all too well. The KGB vacated this apartment block in 1991 when Latvia regained her independence, but over 30 years later the memories remain

Speaking to his ministers at the Élysée Palace last Thursday, the très sérieux Emmanuel Macron called for unity and sacrifice as he announced the end of the age of abundance because of a parade of horrors, including global warming, war in Ukraine and the ongoing supply problems. ‘What we are currently living through is a kind of major tipping point or a great upheaval,’ said Macron. ‘We are living through the end of what could have seemed an era of abundance…the end of the abundance of products, of technologies that seemed always available…the end of the abundance of land and materials including water.’ What is abundance, though? It is the