Journalism
Selected journalism appearing elsewhere.
Foreign Affairs and Defence
2026
By playing down Europe’s defense ability Rutte plays into Moscow’s hands
NATO’s first secretary general, the British general Lord Ismay, once said NATO’s job was to keep the “the Soviet Union out, the Americans in and the Germans down”. The Germans have changed, but the other parts of the job description retain their relevance.
Yet, current secretary general Mark Rutte’s efforts to keep the Americans in are torpedoing his efforts to keep the Russians out. Instead of reducing the risk of a war with Russia, by signaling weakness, he has increased it.
TVP World
Together, European NATO and Congress can stop Trump’s Greenland madness.
With Venezuelan president Maduro captured, Trump’s covetous gaze has moved back north, towards Greenland. The Maduro raid seems to have emboldened him to ignore his advisers that consider it folly in favour of Stephen Miller. Threaten people with the US military, and they will comply goes the theory. Force is “among the options,” Administration officials have been instructed to tell TV interviewers are on the table.
Conservative Home
2025
Rutte’s skillful manipulation of Trump bought Europe time. Now we mustn’t waste it.
Mark Rutte, who served as Dutch prime minister for 14 years, is adept at managing competing egos. This week’s NATO summit was his toughest task yet. His mission: to prevent the most volatile individual ever to hold the American presidency from blowing his top and causing an irreparable rift in the transatlantic alliance.
TVP World
Ronald Reagan once said that the ten scariest words in the English language were “I’m here from the government and I’m here to help.”
He was wrong. For the financial markets at least they are these, issued by a majority of the US Supreme Court on Monday: “Whether Humphrey’s Executor v the United States should be overruled.”
Conservative Home
How Europe Can Defend Itself: Here are ten steps European leaders can take now
French President Emmanuel Macron appears to understand the urgency facing Europe’s leaders. Immediately after U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance’s blistering attack on Europe on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference, the same venue in which Russian President Vladimir Putin assailed in the Western security order in 2007, Macron convened an emergency summit of key European leaders in Paris with the goal of coordinating Europe’s response.
Foreign Policy
2024
If Trump wins, European NATO must prepare to defend against Russia on its own
At a campaign rally in Louisiana, Donald Trump made his intentions clear: he would “encourage” Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” – that is, attack NATO members.
Sure, he added a caveat, in his usual Trumpist way, saying it only applied to NATO members “who didn’t pay their dues.” But Trump caveats are not to be taken seriously. He adds them to give his sycophants a get-out, just like he told people on January 6th to be “peaceful”. They’re not supposed to be believed.
Conservative Home
2023
Shakespeare's guide to Prigozhin's mutiny
In which the recent mutiny is reviewed by as though it were Henry IV, Part I.
The study of late Medieval England gave birth to the term ‘bastard feudalism.’ The term describes the unstable political relations of late medieval society, as the feudal order in which knights gave military service to barons, and barons to kings started breaking down. The historian K.B McFarlane, who coined the term, put it thus (£):
When a man asked another to be his ‘good lord’, he was not commending himself and land; nor did he become anything remotely like a vassal. Rather he was acquiring a temporary patron. In this loose-knit and shamelessly competitive society, it was the ambition of every thrusting gentleman – and also of anyone who aspired to gentility – to attach himself for as long as suited him such as were in a position to further his interests”.
Conservative Home
2022
Every day Russian forces stay in control of Ukrainian territory is another day innocent civilians are murdered. Every day Russian forces stay in control of Ukrainian territory is another day innocent civilians are murdered.Bodies of men lie face down in the mud, hands tied behind their backs. Women and girls have been raped. Local political leaders have been tortured and killed. Corpses not left on the street have been thrown into mass graves. In Irpin and Trostyanets, Bucha and Chernihiv, the Russian army has unleashed hell on the inhabitants. It is doing the same on a much larger scale in Mariupol, where the Russians have apparently deployed mobile crematoriums, which (in the innocent days of late February) the world thought were deployed to avoid having to send dead Russian soldiers back to their mothers. Now they are apparently being used to destroy evidence of war crimes.
Foreign Policy
How to give Ukraine the airforce it needs – Fast
New figures from the Kiel Security institute’s Ukraine Support Tracker show the UK falling behind in its support for Ukraine. But there’s still an area in which the UK’s nimbleness can make a difference: helping Ukraine to fight – in Winston Churchill’s words “with growing strength in the air”. After the liberation of Kherson, it has become the centre of gravity in the war.
Conservative Home
The Ukraine war after six months. The country’s heroism has won time to prepare for a long conflict.
Reports are coming in of Ukrainian advances towards Kherson, the city in the Dnieper that Russia occupied in the first days of the war. Kherson was to have been a bridgehead across the river from which Putin’s ‘orcs’ (as Ukrainians often refer to Russian troops) were to advance towards Odessa and complete the encirclement of Kyiv. But thanks to Ukrainian valour, western arms and intelligence and Russian incompetence, the dismemberment of Ukraine has been avoided.
Conservative Home
Putin’s plan for Ukraine: a chilling combination of subversion, bombardment and invasion
One hundred and thirty thousand troops is a lot: but not enough to subdue a country as large as Ukraine with highly motivated and experienced armed forces, even though they are technologically inferior to the modernised Russian army.
So what exactly is Vladimir Putin’s military buildup for? It has failed as intimidation of a West afraid of war. It united the West instead of dividing it, prompting the UK, Poland and the United States to supply significant quantities of equipment and the EU and United States to offer financial support. Though Olaf Scholz, the German Chancellor, can’t bring himself to say Nord Stream 2 will be cancelled, he stood beside president Biden announcing it would be cancelled for him.
Conservative Home
2021
Ukraine, Putin, and Russia It’s time for belligerency short of war.
It is too late to prevent a Russian invasion of Ukraine. That began eight years ago when “little green men” (i.e: Russian soldiers) occupied Crimea. Their invasion was extended by pro-Russian militias (led by Russian soldiers, paid by Russian money) who “rule” the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
This time round, 100,000 Russian soldiers mass openly on Ukraine’s border, while Ukrainians, who have been denied the advanced Western weapons with which they could have resisted a full-scale Russian assault, sign up to train as insurgents.
Conservative Home
Europe must shed its illusions about Russia
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s troop buildup along Ukraine’s borders initially caught Western powers off guard. Russia’s first invasion in 2014 didn’t get the West to abandon its post-Cold War daydreams. But there are signs that Putin’s threat of another invasion is now forcing the West to shed its illusions.
The United States, France, Britain, and Germany each have their own fantasies: Washington wants to think Europe is done and the United States can now focus on confronting a proper superpower rival, China, forgetting that Putin’s rearmed post-Soviet Russia is still strong enough to menace America’s allies. France wants strategic autonomy for Europe—being able to act independently of the United States on the world stage—while thinking it can control European foreign policy with only 13 percent of democratic Europe’s population.
Foreign Policy
2021
Conservatives need to choose: Are they with democracy or with the Capitol terrorists?
“Where are all the moderate Republican Imams?” asked David Frum, former speechwriter to George W Bush, after the Donald Trump-incited mob had ransacked the Capitol.
We came to learn that the 9/11 attacks, far from coming out of a clear blue sky, were the product of decades of radicalisation that Saudi Arabia had sponsored – because it gave its religious radicals something to do; because it allowed the kingdom to compete for influence with revolutionary Iran; and because the extremists sincerely believed in the doctrines to which the Saudi state paid only lip service. Riyadh was forced into a bloody counter-insurgency campaign against domestic terrorists and fighters returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Conservative Home
2019
Uncle Sam doesn't Have Your Back
Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo have made it clear that the United States is no longer committed to protecting Europe. The need for a viable pan-European defense force has never been greater. The responsibility in the first instance falls to the United Kingdom to take care of their ships.” With those words, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo killed the special relationship and put NATO on life support. Pompeo’s language crystallizes the most radical change in U.S. policy in relation to Europe since the Suez Crisis of 1956.
Foreign Policy
Syria’s Kurds, who fought heroically against the Islamic State for years—only to be abandoned following President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw U.S. troops—are now under attack from a Turkish invasion designed to carve out a 20-mile buffer zone in northern Syria. Pounded by artillery barrages and airstrikes, with the civilian population victimized by atrocities committed by Ankara-backed militias, Syria’s Kurds have one more reason to invoke the ancient Kurdish lament: “We have no friends but the mountains.”
Foreign Policy
Populism and Democracy
2025
‘Gen Z is coming for U!’: Protests push Bulgaria’s government to the edge
Tens, or perhaps hundreds, of thousands of Bulgarians thronged the centers of Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna and smaller cities across the country on Monday evening demanding the resignation of their government. The size of the crowds apparently surprised even the organizers, and young people, thought to have been disillusioned by frequent elections and the unyielding presence of corruption turned out in large numbers: “Gen Z is coming for U! Run!” warned one placard.
TVP World
Pro-Europe, pro-Ukraine and pro-rule of law: these were the three criteria that Ursula von der Leyen, EU commission president and Manfred Weber, president of the European People's Party, laid down as conditions for people they would cooperate with. These conditions also loom large in the EU’s budget negotiations. In the last budget cycle, transfers to Bulgaria averaged 2% of GDP and about 5% of the government expenditure, so you would think recipients of EU funding would do their best to adhere to the conditions.
TVP World
Viktor Orbán has been forced to retreat over his so-called “transparency” law, which has now been put on hold due to “disagreements” in his ruling Fidesz party. Had it not been shelved, the law would have allowed the Hungarian government’s “Sovereignty Protection Authority” to designate any Hungarian entity: civil society organization, independent media outlet, or even any private company, as a threat to sovereignty and ban it from receiving not only donations but also payments for services from “foreigners.”
TVP World
To restore democracy, Georgia’s opposition needs to force the regime into mistakes
Georgia has been in turmoil for almost 40 days. Nightly protests have blocked Tbilisi’s main Rustaveli Avenue and sprung up in cities across the country. The authorities have responded with water cannons, arrests and savage beatings of protesters. The opposition wants new, fair elections to be held but the regime is determined to cling to power.
TVP World
Garvan Walshe: Rattled Vučić wants to silence a British-owned independent Serbian TV station
Nine months of growing and angry protests have shaken his regime of fake democracy. As he and his friends monopolised the media, purged the civil service, and helped themselves to cheap Russian energy, kickbacks on Chinese-funded infrastructure projects, the West had chosen to look away. Unlike other populist leaders, Vučić didn’t berate them, he made himself useful, by sending ammunition to Ukraine.
Conservative Home
2024
Romania disqualfied pro-Kremlin Georgescu. We should all learn from its defence of democracy
Romania’s election commission has blocked pro-Russian candidate Calin Georgescu from running in its rescheduled presidential elections, on the grounds that he has illegally benefited from Russian support. Its decision raises one of the most fraught questions in the running of democratic processes: what do democracies do about anti-democratic politicians – the people who would use democratic freedoms to destroy the system that allowed them to seize power?
Conservative Home
Venezuelans Voted for Freedom. Will they be allowed to have it?
In Venezuela, it was decreed that the minor opposition candidates would get 4.6 per cent between them. But someone, accidentally or deliberately, must have heard it wrong, and gave each of them 4.6 per cent instead. Venezuelan TV announced a preliminary result that had the vote shares totalling 127 per cent.
Conservative Home
2023
Israel's Supreme Court Must Not Repeat Hungary's Mistake
The judiciary needs to strike down Netanyahu’s judicial reform before he turns Israel into a sham democracy—just as Viktor Orban did in Hungary. ake democracies take power by controlling who gives orders to public officials. During Hungarian elections, local polling station committees count the votes. Our research found that in 2018, committees that only had government members on them were far more likely to have irregularities in the count than those composed of both government and opposition. Surprising? Not especially. But it’s also the same reason that Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin wants to prevent the committee that appoints new judges from meeting. And it’s why the Israeli Supreme Court needs to hold the line to defend democracy.
Conservative Home
Meloni, not Wilders is the future of Europe's hard right
Expectations are everything. When the Law and Justice became the largest party, with 36 per cent of the vote, after Polish elections in October, it was understood as a historic defeat for a populist government. When Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party also came first, with 25 per cent of the vote in the Netherlands, it was seen a shock victory, even if the Freedom Party has only a slightly greater chance of forming a government than the zero percent possessed by the Polish Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki.
Conservative Home
Other Topics
2025
Deepseek is no 'Sputnik Moment' - it's the end of the big AI-model bubble
It’s a “Sputnik moment,” cried silicon valley investor Marc Andreesen on the news that DeepSeek, a Chinese company, had replicated the most advanced American large language model, but at far lower cost. Andreesen, whose firm has huge investments in American AI, was talking his book, but there’s no question DeepSeek has shaken up the industry, leading to huge stockmarket losses for Nvidia — the leading AI chip manufacturer — and energy companies that were poised to benefit from increased power demand. Fortunately for them, companies like OpenAI and their rivals Anthropic haven’t yet gone public, so were saved a battering on the exchanges.
Conservative Home
2024
Since Hamas’s October 7 massacre, Tehran-backed Hezbollah has taken advantage of Israel’s war in Gaza to harry Israel’s north. 60,000 Israelis have been displaced for over a year, and those that are not have come under regular rocket attack, and Israel has replied with air raids and assassinations. That relative stability to have ended with Israel’s audacious “exploding pagers” attack in which a thousand Hezbollah pagers and 300 walkie talkies blew up simultaneously. One of the pagers even injured Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, an illustration of how close the ties between Tehran and Hezbollah are.
Conservative Home
Bukele’s El Salvador. Bitcoin, a passport lottery, and the world’s toughest gang crackdown.
San Salvador was the scariest place I’d ever been.
I was in the capital of the central American state of El Salvador thanks to the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, on one of its projects to try and inculcate democratic principles in the conservative parties of Latin America. The Tories’ sister party there was known as ARENA, which, like its opponents FMLN, was a faction in the country’s horrific civil war by then transmuted into a political party.
Conservative Home
2020
A mad weekend dash for sun has just taken me to Naples. The city, its old historical centre, continuously inhabited long before the Roman Empire, lived up to its long-standing reputation for liveliness and chaos. From the tiny alleys on a Roman street plan overlooked by eight or nine storeys, the abbeys built by Angevin kings, decaying masterpieces of baroque architecture, to fishmonger-restaurants with live produce and massive loins of tuna selling for €10 a kilo, and traffic that makes Rome’s resemble a sedate town in Baden-Württenberg, forty-eight hours there subject you to constant sensory bombardment.
Conservative Home
2019
Orban’s fertility drive is an attack on Hungarian women
It’s been a busy view weeks for the man opposition demonstrators like to call ‘Viktator’. Freedom House downgraded Hungary to “partly free,” the first EU member state to qualify for this dubious distinction.
On Tuesday Mike Pompeo, the US Secretary of State, troubled Viktor Orban with a visit. The effect was mixed. On the one hand, the Trump Adminstration finds Orban’s nationalism congenial. But the US (if not the President himself) is growing increasingly concerned by how close he’s got to his fellow reactionary strongman, Vladimir Putin.
Conservative Home
2018
Gove is setting himself up as Brexit’s Michael Collins
When, on the eve of the triggering of Article 50, the Irish columnist Fintan O’Toole asked who will be Brexit’s Michael Collins, he didn’t, of course mean who would be the first Brexiteer to be shot by his own side. He had in mind a different vision of Collins: of the man who made the compromises necessary to make independence possible.
Conservative Home
Brexit Is Destroying Britain’s Constitution
Two events last week changed the Brexit game. On Monday, the European Court of Justice ruled that the United Kingdom could unilaterally cancel its decision to leave the European Union before signing a withdrawal agreement. Then on Wednesday, Conservative members of parliament called a vote of no confidence in their leader Theresa May (who leads the party as well as being prime minister)—and lost. They only mustered 117 votes to unseat her, while she secured the backing of 200 Conservative MPs. According to Tory party rules, she now can’t be challenged for another year: Instead of deposing her, they’ve given her a year of magical leading.
Foreign Policy
To win back young voters, the Conservative Party should make feminism central to its platform
If this year has been unusually pell-mell in Westminster, August at least gives us some breathing space. The long-term prospects for our party are not good. The last election saw us lose significant ground, not among the youngest (there wasn’t much ground to lose) but among the 25-44 age group when people normally shed their idealism, start paying taxes, and conclude there’s more to politics than spending other people’s money.
Conservative Home
2016
Vote Remain, or risk turning Britain into Argentina
What country was richer than Britain at the height of its power? Not Germany or the still emerging United States, but one in South America famous for wine, steak, military dictators, footballers with a weak grasp of the rules, and hyperinflation.
Before the First World War, Argentina was the richest country in the world. It had successful export industries, took in huge quantities of foreign investment (mainly from Britain) and attracted hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Europe. Buenos Aires boasted both a Harrods and a Hurlingham club.
Conservative Home
2015
We must rediscover British hospitality, and welcome in those fleeing Syria
What kind of people have we become? We are four years into an Arab civil war, fought as though on the Eastern Front by men pitiless as Hitler and Stalin, until the last of the oil money behind Assad and ISIS runs out. Any sane person will flee the hell Syria is now, and they will need somewhere to live for decades. Yet Slovakia agrees to take 200; Poland 2000, but only Christians; Hungary builds a fence on the Serbian border; Britain hunkers down behind the Channel. Germany, which expects to admit 800,000, stands alone.
Conservative Home
That life continues as normal here in Singapore two weeks after Lee Kuan Yew’s death is testament to the city state’s founder’s success. But the disciplined state he created will struggle to advance.
Conservative Home
2014
“At his left foot he felt something warm and furry. It was Medvedev.”
It’s 8pm. The phone rings on Viktor Yanukovich’s desk. “The Russian Ambassador, Mr President.”
“Very well. Show him in.”
Ambassador Koroviev was in no mood for pleasantries. “You’ve failed us twice already. You failed to clear the Maidan, and now you’ve allowed the anti-protest laws to be cancelled. We’ll only ask once more.” He took out a handkerchief, and spent a moment polishing his glasses, before turning to his colleague. “Azzazello, play that for the President.”
Conservative Home