British foreign policy has always oscillated between isolation and engagement. The division has shaped Conservative thinking over generations. The archetypal icon of engagement is Winston Churchill. In the wake of the Munich Agreement, Churchill made his greatest anti-appeasement appeal: ‘What I find unendurable is the sense of our country falling into the power, into the
The world order has shifted on its axis, having been given a peremptory boot by the US President. What is striking to me is the speed with which our government has accustomed itself to the new dawn, overnight, almost with a sense of relief. Listen to senior Labour figures today and they do not always
The head of America’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (Doge) has written to all federal workers in the US asking them to explain in a brief email what they did last week. The exercise is intended to take no more than five minutes but has already lead to howls from many employees. How could anyone expect
We should all feel scared to our bones about the persecution of the SAS, soldiers harried through the courts for jobs they did many decades ago. It’s not that the SAS should be allowed to behave like trigger-happy psychos, but as Paul Wood wrote in this magazine before Christmas, Special Forces are now being hounded
On Thursday 16 August 1739, the young John Wesley met and for an hour argued with the middle-aged Bishop of Bristol, Joseph Butler. It was an ill-tempered encounter. Wesley believed that God communicated directly with individuals, invested his promises and purposes in them personally, and charged them with missions to reveal and explain the divine
Kyiv We resemble pilgrims. Because of the war, no one can fly to Ukraine, and so we travel, romantically, by night train. ‘We’ means assorted European dignitaries, a thin sprinkling of Americans, and the media. I find myself sharing a cabin with a former president of the European parliament. The holy day is Monday, the
Among British car factories, Nissan at Sunderland is the most productive and Jaguar Land Rover at Solihull probably the most advanced. As for industrial landmarks, the former British Leyland complex at Longbridge is reduced to a research and development facility for Chinese-owned MG; but ‘Plant Oxford’ at Cowley, the original home of Morris Motors now
