America’s authoritarian tilt is visible just about anywhere you look. You can see it in the institutions Trump has bent to his will, and the way he has pushed his presidential powers well beyond the limits of his office. Yet, I think if you really want to understand the unique authoritarian turn developing in America, you should look no further than Washington DC. Today, the beating heart of America’s federal government is a vision of the country Trump wants to build, and the

As of the 1st July 2026, we will see a reduction in the amount of steel that can be imported before tariffs are applied, additional quotas being introduced on imported steel products that are also manufactured domestically (where they previously have not been in place), and an increase in tariff rates for those imports in-excess of quotas. These new steel trade measures, inter alia increasing the tariff rate to 50% on products that go beyond our import quota, might sound lik

"Let us suppose that foreigners came from another country, and brought opium into England, and seduced the people of your country to smoke it, would not you, the sovereign of the said country, look upon such a procedure with anger, and in your just indignation endeavor to get rid of it?" This is an excerpt from the famous 1839 letter, penned by Lin Zexu, addressed to Queen Victoria. Supposedly, this letter was never received by the monarch; no halt in the export of the goods

Viktor Orbán’s vanquishing in Hungary’s April election was, on paper at least, the kind of moment that once nourished Europe’s left. After sixteen-years of calcified nationalism, prolonged democratic erosion and Hungary’s suffocation beneath the dense smog of permanent culture war, one might have expected the floodgates to buckle for a great socialist or labour revival; a broad, popular movement surging through the opening, wiping out Orbán’s Fidesz and ushering in a fresh pr

The panda in your Zoo is not a gift. Although they look like harmless, black-and-white fur balls with sleepy eyes, giant pandas are not just lovable zoo attractions; they are among the most influential instruments in China’s diplomatic toolkit. For decades, Beijing has used pandas to reward friendly governments, deepen trade ties, and signal political approval. Just as importantly, it has used them to punish countries that fall out of favour. This strategy has a name: panda d

If entertainment podcasts were to compete for the most mentions of “private equity”, Richard Osman and Marina Hyde’s The Rest is Entertainment would be the uncontested victor. Ostensibly a show about “what’s hot” in entertainment, it seems almost every week the hosts cannot help but launch into a discussion of the financial and political movements lurking beneath the surface. But why is a podcast about entertainment constantly talking about tax regimes and antitrust laws? Th

Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex trafficking syndicate has become one of the defining examples of elite corruption in the past decade. With insurmountable living costs accompanied by a widening wealth gap, stories of elites using their enormous capital to sexually abuse underprivileged children have caused an uproar across American party lines. However, though many of these sexual offenders have been exposed to the public through the ‘Epstein Files,’ federal law enforcement under

Since the 26th March report exposing what CNN describes as a 'global rape academy', I’ve been patiently waiting for the British media to give serious attention to such a harrowing investigation, particularly given the broader context. Gisèle Pelicot’s recent court victory is still fresh in public memory, as she successfully brought a case against her former husband who raped and abused her. His despicable actions were facilitated by online communities. But Pelicot's case also

Elon Musk seemed to be omnipresent a year ago. 2025 was swathed in a succession of Musk's political undertakings, his name part of the furniture of the headlines. January saw him salute in a way akin to the Nazis at the inauguration of Donald Trump, February his awkward wielding of a chainsaw at CPAC and the painful declaration that he had, quote, “become meme”. His role as leader of DOGE resulted in immense pitfalls for federal agencies and slashing of government jobs, as we

A recent trip to the Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia impressed on me an increasingly prescient political issue requiring ever more European attention: the status of non-citizen Russians in the Baltics. As of 2024, in Estonia 61,000 people have ‘undetermined citizenship’. In Latvia, 175,000 people have noncitizen status, making up 9% of the population. These murky categories exist as a result of a desire to protect independence and cultural heritage after the Baltic states

Since its posthumous publication in 1532, Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince has served as an incisive articulation of realism – the idea that power is gained through self-interest and competition. Written against the backdrop of the Italian Wars (1494 – 1559), The Prince was intended for the eyes of Lorenzo de Medici, the ruler of the Florentine Republic. Yet, Machiavelli’s insights remain robust, and, to this day, his magnum opus continues to provide a helpful framework for m

Long gone are the days of muskets, bayonets, and line infantry. Throughout history, the nature of conflict has consistently evolved. Both World Wars drove major advances and a growing reliance on radio communications, aircraft, and tanks, and ultimately culminated in the birth of the nuclear bomb. The Cold War era saw an increased use of precision guided missiles (PGMs), satellite GPS, and surveillance. Today, artificial intelligence, especially drones, is reshaping moder

US president Donald Trump may be facing perilous declines in public opinion , precipitated in large part by the conflict with Iran, but he continues to completely play western news media outlets, using them to stage his politics with the dressing of reality TV theatrics that he so depends on. He is conducting politics at the sharp end of things in the international arena like they are a reality TV show, designed to keep his viewers hooked. And news media’s constant reproduct

Orbán spent 16 years making himself the EU’s biggest problem. His legacy, it turns out, is an opposition equipped with a supermajority to dismantle everything that he built – if they choose to. Last Sunday, Péter Magyar 's insurgent Tisza party got the mandate to re-wire the state Viktor Orbán had consolidated around himself. For the EU, the implications of this election are immediate, and for once are in Brussels’ favour. The most relevant and urgent consequence is that the

How “slopaganda” is reshaping the information battlefield Despite America’s tech dominance, Explosive Media , reportedly an Iranian outlet, seems to grasp the American psyche better than current U.S. messaging. This gap is becoming clear as AI-generated content expands. In recent months, Explosive Media’s wave of AI-generated videos has circulated across platforms like X and TikTok. Many are styled with bright, Lego-like animation , paired with English-language rap or narrati

In the wake of its victory over the declining Spanish Empire in 1898, the United States of America was faced with a political and moral problem. Specifically, the territories it had acquired under the Treaty of Paris - the largest of which were Cuba, the Philippines and Puerto Rico - were inhabited by over 10 million people, or the equivalent to 12% of the US population at the time. As Daniel Immerwahr describes in his book How to Hide an Empire: A Short History of the Greate

There can be no doubt that the Prime Minister is a very able man. Nor can there be any doubt that he is a very competent man. The Prime Minister conquered the legal profession to its highest attainable rank outside of politics. The Prime Minister entered politics for the right reasons. The Prime Minister climbed the ranks of his party to become its leader just five years after entering Parliament, a record in the Labour Party. Why then, given his glittering resume and clear a

California’s gubernatorial election grows in intensity and unpredictability every day. The political landscape in one of the wealthiest and most politically influential states in the US seems to be constantly shifting, and this race has been no exception. In fact, it perfectly reflects California’s distinctively eclectic, trend-bucking politics. It's worth remembering that California's own electoral system contributes to this dynamic. Since 2010, the state has used the Top-T

The recent mainstreaming of wealth taxes as a political tendency in the UK has demonstrated an appetite for solutions to inequality. Although there have been successful debates, won with logic as much as rhetoric, a tangible wealth tax policy is still in its infancy. The Green Party, the main policy vehicle for the Wealth Tax, is seeking between 1% and 2% of tax on assets held over £10 million per annum. Yet who exactly pays, and how they pay, remain unanswered questions. W

In 1916, a twenty-four year-old British soldier arrived at the Battle of the Somme, where over a million men were killed or wounded over just five miles of ground. John Ronald Reuel (J.R.R) Tolkien lost two of his closest friends in the battle, an experience of indiscriminate slaughter that stayed with him for the rest of his life. Echoes of the First World War can be found throughout Tolkien’s later literary work, most famously in The Lord of the Rings - from the corpse-st