Everyone – the West, Putin, China – learned the wrong lessons from the Gorbachev era Gorbachev’s experience showed Chinese Communist Party leaders that if you gave people a taste of freedom they would look for moreSat Sept 03 2022 - 05:00
Row over Russian tourists entering EU is a sign of things to come Dispute over visas foreshadows wider EU fissures that threaten European unity on Ukraine this autumnSat Aug 20 2022 - 05:00
Johnson and Zelenskiy: The contrasting fortunes of two political comicsZelinskiy rose astonishingly to meet a moment of grave crisis while Johnson proved himself to be a joker without substanceSat Jul 23 2022 - 05:00
After Johnson, the real task ahead for the UK is of managing declineJust like Trump did with the Republican Party, Johnson has unleashed demons that will haunt the Conservatives – and Britain – for at least a generation.Sat Jul 09 2022 - 00:01
Zelensky: A biography by Serhii RudenkoBook review: Workmanlike telling of the Ukrainian president’s story suffers from a lack of analysis of the broad forces that shaped his lifeSun Jul 03 2022 - 06:00
Europe is the only place where Macron can now leave a legacy World View: The loss of his majority leaves the French president facing the prospect of five years of gridlockSat Jun 25 2022 - 05:00
Slowly but unmistakably, Ireland and Britain are growing apart Under the Conservatives, the two neighbours’ economies and political cultures are diverging in lasting waysSat Jun 11 2022 - 04:15
The Ukraine war will transform Europe’s demographicsIf Ukrainian refugees stay in their new homes, the effect of this new diaspora will be profound for Europe and for Ukraine itselfSat May 28 2022 - 05:00
The war neither side can afford to loseNot knowing where his botched war on Ukraine goes next might force Putin to just dig in and waitSat May 14 2022 - 01:00
Macron’s grand experiment faces defining testRunoff will reveal whether he broke the mould or facilitated far-right’s riseSat Apr 16 2022 - 01:00
Botched Ukraine invasion damages myth of Putin’s powerWorld View: West overestimated leader’s global clout – and maybe also his domestic muscleSat Apr 02 2022 - 01:00
Putin the invader: How did he get to this point?Soon the West will have to consider how the Russian president can be offered an off-rampSat Mar 05 2022 - 06:00
EU is not at the table when it comes to dealing with the crisis in UkraineWorld View: Europe’s major powers are bystanders in what is a straight fight between the US and RussiaSat Feb 19 2022 - 01:00
World View: If this is war, Putin may already be winningThe threat of conflict has been enough to unsettle neighbours and win concessionsSat Feb 05 2022 - 01:00
Why radicals went quiet on EuropeFar right and left parties have quietly been dropping their hardest eurosceptic policiesSat Jan 22 2022 - 01:00
Macron’s ‘piss them off’ strategy claims the initiativeFrench president’s swipe at the unvaccinated exposes divisions to his rightSat Jan 08 2022 - 01:00
Xi Jinping had a good 2021, and he ends it with an iron grip on ChinaThe president’s path has been cleared to lead for life, but he faces problems domesticallyFri Dec 24 2021 - 01:00
China, the UN Human Rights Office and the Irish whistleblowerSacking of Irishwoman Emma Reilly highlights long-standing dilemmaSat Nov 27 2021 - 01:00
World View: The EU must avoid Lukashenko’s trapWhereas Brussels once denounced states for building fences, it now helps police themSat Nov 13 2021 - 01:00
Covid could turn an incipient generational divide into a major schismWorld View: A scarcity of affordable housing and secure jobs has torn the social contractSat Oct 30 2021 - 01:00
How groupthink in its Covid response led the UK to disasterThe Johnson government’s approach meant a killer disease was allowed to run rampantSat Oct 16 2021 - 01:00
World View: Europe’s centre-left makes a comeback of sortsPandemic boosts hybrid social democracy as it battles far-right and radical leftSat Oct 02 2021 - 01:00
World View: Connectivity is the new battlefieldThe internet, border controls, supply chains and migration are the new weapons in our globalised worldSat Sept 18 2021 - 01:00
Little sign of revived relationship between US and EUBiden’s priorities are domestic, his foreign policy set for his home audienceSat Sept 04 2021 - 01:00
World View: The Merkel method only got Europe so farDecent, pragmatic, steady-handed German leader recoiled from Europe’s biggest threatsSat Aug 07 2021 - 01:00
If the pandemic tells us how the world will deal with global warming, we’re in big troubleCan world powers learn lessons from this event and apply them to global warming?Sat Jul 24 2021 - 01:00
World View: Don’t be so sure that Covid will change the worldEvidence so far suggests pandemic has merely reinforced people’s existing viewsSat Jul 10 2021 - 01:00
Uefa can’t continue to play politics by its own rulesPublic expectations of sports and the organisations that run them are changingSat Jun 26 2021 - 01:00
Creeping authoritarianism inside EU is a real threat to the blocSwift response to Belarus contrasts with EU’s inability to deal with threats to democracy in Hungary and PolandSat May 29 2021 - 01:00
UN delivers its customary response to Israeli-Palestinian conflict – silenceWorld View: Failure of international bodies to speak with one voice works to Israel’s advantageSat May 15 2021 - 01:00
Joe Biden’s Everything Doctrine belies a radical shiftThe ‘American First’ legacy lives on in ways the Biden White House might not like to admitSat May 01 2021 - 01:00
Pandemic has shown the EU’s resilience, not its frailtyEurope’s Covid story has not yet been written, and it is possible a longer view might be more forgivingSat Apr 17 2021 - 01:00
The EU needs a single market for newsThe biggest sources of EU news are based outside the bloc – and that distorts how the continent sees itselfSat Apr 03 2021 - 01:00
Brexit blinds Britain to AstraZeneca’s blundersLack of transparency on Oxford-developed vaccine fuel for European and US cautionSat Mar 20 2021 - 01:00
How the fortunes of Nicolas Sarkozy and Michel Barnier divergedWill the man who Sarkozy once said had ‘the charisma of an oyster’ run for the Élysée?Sat Mar 06 2021 - 01:00
Brexit is done but the rows have only just begunConvulsions of past weeks suggest forces unleashed by 2016 vote still shape continent’s affairsSat Feb 06 2021 - 01:00
Biden may call for bipartisan truce – but he should prepare for warIn Washington bipartisan deal-making is about as useful as knowing how to use a faxSat Jan 23 2021 - 01:00
Violent, shambolic, inept: A grimly fitting finale to the Trump yearsWorld view: The ragtag mob storming the US Capitol should be taken deadly seriouslySat Jan 09 2021 - 01:00
Anna O’Sullivan died of Covid-19 in May, just shy of her 100th birthday2020 in review: The virus hit people who witnessed the past century’s defining momentsSat Dec 26 2020 - 06:00
Erasmus exchanges another senseless casualty of BrexitWorld View: At the root of British antipathy lies a fear it is a dark plot to indoctrinate the young in the ideology of Euro-superstatismSat Dec 26 2020 - 01:00
Bad leaders the world over hope vaccine will mitigate political damageThe vainglorious will see vaccine success as an easy way to recover their standingSat Dec 12 2020 - 01:00
World View: How will global far-right adapt without US figurehead?Internationalists hope Biden victory heralds wider fall in far-right fortunesSat Nov 28 2020 - 01:00
How Ireland's judges are made: a glimpse inside a closed systemThe unorthodox process for choosing Séamus Woulfe has shone a light on a defective systemSat Nov 28 2020 - 01:00
Séamus Woulfe’s selection for Supreme Court 'differed from normal practice'Ex-government insiders indicate taoiseach would usually discuss candidates for roleThu Nov 19 2020 - 01:00
Deliberations on the appointment of Woulfe were highly circumscribedDysfunctional system for appointing Supreme Court judges is in desperate need of an overhaulSat Nov 14 2020 - 01:00
Vaccine nationalism will put poorest countries at back of the queueWorld View: International scientific co-operation on Covid-19 not replicated by governmentsSat Nov 14 2020 - 01:00
Appointment of judges remains a haphazard, opaque processEven most Ministers tend not to see how a Government arrives at selections for judicial rolesFri Nov 13 2020 - 02:54
Cabinet not told judges applied for post filled by Séamus WoulfeAt least three judges wrote to Government seeking job taken by former attorney generalFri Nov 13 2020 - 02:04
American democracy is in peril – and the rot goes far deeper than TrumpPublic faith in the system has been eroding for decades but accelerated after 2008 crashSat Oct 31 2020 - 01:00
World View: Trump is symptom not cause of US’s worst flawsDysfunction and decay in American democracy are harbingers of waning authoritySat Oct 17 2020 - 01:00
