Gwythian Prins

Political science uses anaemic jargon. The ‘Overton Window’ frames all topics that at any given moment are deemed to be politically respectable. It moves. However, since Trump’s inauguration on 20 January we need more robust imagery. Potus47 – Mr Trump – is the captain of an ice-bound ship and he has been dynamiting the pack ice to get it free. Sequenced, linked charges have been exploded to create open water leads. The shock waves have global importance. Tariff threats were one stick of dynamite that detonated, particularly those levied on China to push back its gaming of the era of globalisation since the PRC was admitted to the WTO in 2001.

Is it 'irresponsible' for the Royal Navy to plan to protect the fisheries of the UK’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) when the Brexit transition period ends? The chairman of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee thinks so. The BBC made much of it. But Tobias Ellwood is wrong: it would be irresponsible not to talk now of a deterrent credible in the eyes of prospective trespassers. And who might they be? Given the importance which France attaches to our punishment on leaving the EU for reasons which have nothing to do with fish, but with much bigger psycho-dramatic issues that Robert Tombs and ‘Caroline Bell’ have recently explained, French eyes and minds should be the primary target.