BUSINESS

Occasionally, history generates smooth changes from one era to another. More commonly, such shifts occur only gradually and untidily. And sometimes, as the former Downing Street foreign policy adviser John Bew puts it in the New Statesman, history unfolds “in a series of flashes and bangs”. In Caracas last weekend, Donald Trump’s forces did this … Read more

The last time I saw Béla Tarr was a few years ago at the Nexus conference in Amsterdam. We were invited to speak about the state of the world and of the arts. We both thought light and darkness existed in the world, even if our perception about them differed. Béla was already weakened in … Read more

I saw, at first hand, the slow erosion of the rule of law in Hungary. It began not with a single shocking act but with quiet legal changes that narrowed space for dissent; each step justified as reasonable or necessary, until suddenly, democracy itself felt like a performance rather than a reality. Watching current developments … Read more

The US is advancing a new global order. Over the past eight decades Washington pursued – when it suited American interests – an order based on international law, liberalism, multilateralism and democratic values. The new one is based on autocracy and the use of force, and is underpinned by xenophobic nationalism. For the transatlantic relationship … Read more

Sir Keir Starmer’s plan for 2026 was to talk more about the domestic issues that concern British voters. Donald Trump knocked that plan off course. US intervention in Venezuela inevitably demanded the prime minister’s attention, as did this week’s summit of Ukraine’s allies, the “coalition of the willing”, in Paris. Progress towards agreeing security guarantees … Read more

When a bleary-eyed Trump explained the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro this past Saturday, he invoked the Monroe doctrine: while the US president sounded as if he were reading about it for the first time, historians of course recognized the idea of Washington as a kind of guardian of the western hemisphere. Together with the national … Read more

‘We do need Greenland, absolutely,” Donald Trump told the Atlantic on 5 January, with the hand-wavy follow-up, “We need it for defence.” His adviser Stephen Miller was more aggressive still in an interview with CNN, saying: “The real question is, by what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? What is the basis of their … Read more

Good things may come to those who wait, but when it comes to repairing the Brexit settlement Britain was left with by Boris Johnson, the waiting has come at a heavy cost. Prices are higher, trade is weaker and our influence diminished. That is why Keir Starmer’s promise to bring forward legislation this year to … Read more