What the Anglosphere and Europe wanted was a revolution of democratic liberalism catalysed by Western technology companies. Leave out social media, and this was much the same story that was told about...

Read more about The Revolutionary Decade: Tunisia since the Coup

All​ in all, this new government looks much more like a continuation of the first six years of post-New Labour Tory rule than the last six years of post-Brexit Tory rule. There is, however, one glaring...

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On Chile

Tony Wood, 3 November 2022

Many of the constitution’s social provisions – among them access to healthcare, free public education and making water (currently privatised) a public good – are broadly popular, even among those...

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We live in a world, as Stuart Hall put it, in which one can be just as ‘committed’ a revolutionary as Marx or Lenin, but ‘every now and then – Saturday mornings, perhaps, just before the demonstration...

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Diary: Xi Jinping Studies

Long Ling, 20 October 2022

Dr Song continues: ‘As we all know, Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era is a huge ideological system.’ He has said ‘as we all know’ three times so far. If...

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Short Cuts: Bellicose and Underinformed

James Butler, 22 September 2022

Liz Truss has shepherded no major piece of legislation or reform into existence; her tenure at the Foreign Office was marked by enthusiastically bellicose if underinformed confrontations with Sergei Lavrov...

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Short Cuts: In Riga

Samuel Hanafin, 8 September 2022

In Riga​ this summer I went to a ceremony at the Freedom Monument to commemorate the deportations of 1941, when Soviet authorities removed 14,000 citizens in less than 24 hours, sending many of...

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Keys to the World: Sea Power

Tom Stevenson, 8 September 2022

Sea power isn’t just a matter of building a bigger navy. Nor is it reducible to the skill of admirals. Even the best ships with the ablest captains will struggle without conveniently located ports and...

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Where there are signs of chaos to rival the ‘winter of discontent’ – the twenty-­mile queues of trucks waiting to get through the port of Dover, the six­-hour waits at A&E, the missed holidays...

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It’s Our Turn: Where the North Begins

Rory Scothorne, 4 August 2022

Why did something as colossal as the industrial revolution fail to shift the balance of British political power decisively towards industry and the North? The organic ‘levelling-up’ achieved by the...

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Fraudpocalypse

John Lanchester, 4 August 2022

Volkswagen didn’t need to pay any attention to what regulators thought, because it knew better than the people who made the rules. We are the car people; we want to make diesel engines; our diesel engines...

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We blitzed it: Inhabiting the Oil World

Laleh Khalili, 4 August 2022

Geopolitics is never untethered from political struggles and the world’s prime mover isn’t located somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, even if so much malignant power has emanated from Europe...

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Short Cuts: At Blair’s Gathering

David Runciman, 21 July 2022

There was a film of Condoleezza Rice interviewing Larry Ellison about what could be learned from the vertically integrated corporate model being pioneered by Elon Musk at Tesla. Barring Blair’s, Musk’s...

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Johnson’s Downfall

James Butler, 21 July 2022

The next prime minister will most likely be chosen by an electorate of two hundred thousand wealthy geriatrics and small-town Poujadistes, who nurture obsessions with Europe, taxation, migrants and other...

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Diary: Shanghai Shelf Life

Mimi Jiang, 21 July 2022

New group chats have sprung up to share the latest intel on which spots are secretly open. The best coded advertisement was for a badminton gym: ‘Due to Covid restrictions, our gym is not open to the...

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In 1852 California introduced its first anti-Chinese law, a tax on foreign miners that targeted Chinese migrants in particular. In order to work, foreigners had to pay three dollars a month; before long,...

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Shades of Peterloo: Indecent Government

Ferdinand Mount, 7 July 2022

Each of the five Acts of Parliament is intended to increase government control: over Parliament, over elections, over the courts, over immigrants and over public demonstrations. How it all brings back...

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Short Cuts: Petro Wins

Gwen Burnyeat, 7 July 2022

IN​ one of the many videos circulating on social media of people celebrating the results of Colombia’s presidential election run-off on 19 June, a man bursts from a door onto a small...

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