With Peter Mandelson once again slinking away  from British government with his (apparently forked) tail between his legs, it gives pause for reflection on the dangers inherent in the fact that, at some level, politics comes down to the personal. Just like all news is local news somewhere  in the world, the people at the heart of power behind the headlines, campaigns, and scandals of national or global significance, are people, driven by personal agency and motivations. For d

Only a select few would claim agricultural surpluses are a sexy topic. But in this arena the seeds have been sown for a potential backlash against the current US administration, as recently decimated international food aid policies were once a pressure release valve for tensions with the agriculture lobby over slumping crop prices – a problem faced by the US government again today.  Trump’s vision is of America as a producer, an export powerhouse, maker and grower of things t

This Trump administration’s recent Latin American chevauchées are old school. But the world has moved on since Monroe, and regional actors may well respond in more modern manners to the egregious treatment of Venezuela. ‘Gunboat diplomacy’ was the name awarded, perhaps most famously, to the actions of US Commodore Perry in the 1850s. The USA gained access to the closed-off Japanese economy by pounding Japanese infrastructure from the sea until it got its way. Though this infa

Economic woes, largely originating in our productivity problem , underscore much British political discourse today. The productivity problem  boils down to the notion that the amount of additional value generated per average UK work hour underwhelms compared to our economic peers  and superiors, like France, Germany, the USA , and perhaps soon Poland .  The UK has recently seen record work absence  due to sickness , is consistently low on comparative worker engagement  scores

Bucket hats, low-rise jeans, Oasis on tour, and Tony Blair’s face over our screens. Was it 2025? Or is it 1999? Trick question, of course, for it is both. It has not escaped the notice of many today that a tidal wave of 1990s and 2000s revival has hit us in the West in recent years. On an aesthetic level  alone, a new generation of adolescents have thrown themselves with abandon into the shibboleths of ‘90s/’00s fashion. From Vogue  to Elle  and far beyond, those who experien

Given the limelight on Donald Trump’s oration this year at the UN General Assembly, one would be forgiven for thinking it will not go down in history books as a stage from which was delivered a rousing paean to multilateralism, democracy, and the rule of law. Yet to the world assembled in New York that day, the session began with exactly that , from Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, who preceded Trump onto the stage to give the first oration of the Assembly’s mo

The USA’s modern food security policy can be traced to 1943 when President Roosevelt initiated the United Nations Conference on Food and...

As heightened tensions and security competition come to define international politics, there has been something of an increase in...

For those in the realist tradition of international relations, control of territory represents the top concern for sovereign states....

In the UK today, something of an authoritarian turn in the government has been observed. According to Civicus Monitor, as of December...