The Week

Leading article

The slow death of Nato

The Cold War was won by 26 words contained within article five of the Treaty of Washington, which founded Nato in 1949: ‘The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.’ There was no wriggling and no qualification.

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week | 22 May 2014

Home Demand for housing posed ‘the biggest risk to financial stability’ according to Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England. House prices rose by 8 per cent in the year to the end of March, according to the Office for National Statistics, and in London the increase was 17 per cent. The annual

Diary

Ancient and modern

How Plato and Aristotle would have tackled unemployment

Labour is up in arms because many of the new jobs currently being created are among the self-employed. This seems to them to be cheating. Quite the reverse, ancients would have said. Ancient thinkers knew all about the needs of the poor and were worried about their capacity to cause trouble (as they saw it)

Barometer

A Romanian neighbour? Most people wouldn’t even notice

Parliamentary privilege Some facts and figures about the European Parliament, according to the parliament: — The parliament annually costs €3.10 per citizen in EU member states (compared with €7.30 for Westminster). — It received 1.4 million visitors over the past four years, with 790,400 visiting the Parliamentarium. And some facts from Single Seat, the campaign

Letters