Politics & Economics

Whenever America’s enemies are said to be using ‘asymmetric’ or unconventional tactics and proxy warfare, it’s easy to forget not only that America is the world’s most prolific...

Guinea hasn’t had much experience of democracy. Since independence it has been ruled by a series of dictators, some better liked than others. Alpha Condé was elected ten years ago, in the...

Conspiracists describe epi­phanies where they start to see the big pict­ure, the universal meta-conspiracy that ex­plains and links everything. But the picture isn’t big. It’s small....

Since China tamed the virus and normal life resumed, the CCP has bestowed its highest honours on key scientists and doctors. Political commentators, like middle-class consumers, are in high spirits. The...

Should Trump’s nominee be confirmed, the Supreme Court will shift to the right, probably far to the right, and will remain there for a generation. Ruth Bader Ginsburg takes the lion’s share...

I had just arrived in the town of Tapachula in the southern state of Chiapas, not far from the Guatemalan border, when I heard that a boat had capsized. On the morning of 11 October, a fisherman had spotted...

In 2019, Boris Johnson became prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In 2020, he shrank into being prime minister of England. For the second time in less than seven...

Johnson’s reputation has fluctuated along with historians’ views of Reconstruction. Long celebrated as a heroic defender of the constitution against the Radicals, he is today a leading contender...

The worlds, pre-internet, were so much smaller and dingier and more accidental than those of today’s feminisms. Whether or not you knew about this group or that argument depended on who you...

A British equivalent of Fox News, wherever it may come from, would have its own distinctive character – less evangelism and more Elgar, fewer guns and more poppies – but the commercial and...

Ofqual is not an independent agency; it is a government department and acted on the instructions of the minister. The problems with the algorithm aren’t technical but a consequence of the political...

Europeans can gripe about having to do business with the Russian state and Russian planners may complain about being beholden to the European market, but geography conspires against them. The gas is where...

Joe Biden seems to have got into politics simply because he could: for the fuck of it, not out of any ethical commitment or bracing ambition. Unlike most recent Democrat and Republican nominees for president...

One reason the EU has been so keen to tie the UK to level playing field conditions, and is so reluctant to believe the UK’s repeated assurances that it has no intention of cutting regulatory standards,...

In a time of crisis, the public sees governments as being like lightbulbs: when they stop working, they need to be changed, and the most important thing to consider about the new bulb is whether it will...

When bystanders approach shouting ‘Get off,’ he glances up, pulls out a con­tainer (possibly mace) and points it to­wards them. Then he looks back down and continues to watch Floyd...

The East India Company’s relat­ions with the British state had always been ambivalent. Its increasing territorial and military pretensions after 1750 attracted growing attention and demands for...

Reconstruction was under attack from the outset. There was never a consensus on its legitimacy, and in the end it sank under the weight of racism, indifference, fatigue, administrative weakness, economic...