Europe unprepared for energy crisis if Israel attacks Iranian oil industry
Once again the world finds itself on the brink of a renewed energy crisis, and once again Europe appears ill-prepared.
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Opinion
Latest reporting and analysis on opinion.
Zelensky and Western leaders aim at exhausting Russia. Is that going to work?
A war of attrition against Russia has never proved to be a good idea.
Five reasons why Israel’s 7-front war is so hard to win
Over the past three weeks Israel has delivered an exceptional masterclass in intelligence-led military operations.
Will Germany’s dithering, dull Scholz be ‘Biden-ed’ by his SDP party?
“Scholz survives” blared the Brussels press after his party, the Social Democrats (SDP), narrowly beat the populist-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in recent…
Tories could fail again, part of a grim political season in the West
Anyone reasonably conversant with British history knows not to underestimate that redoubtable country that has made such an immense contribution to civilisation:…
Tusk calls it ‘militant democracy’ as he rejects and violates decisions by the courts
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has now made it official: he and his government are applying the principles of “militant democracy” to defend liberal democracy…
Days among the war graves of Normandy, and I remember brave men and monstrous men
Robert Deegan is dead.
How the Greens die: suffering economy and young dump the ‘party of youth’
After another catastrophic result in yet another eastern Bundesstaat, the German Green Party has lost its leaders.
Austrian far-right victory: fleeting anomaly or lasting transformation?
Austria, long governed by a de facto two-party system, experienced a seismic shift in its political landscape in the most recent elections.
Polls say Austria’s right-wing FPÖ will win election, pop that in your strudel and ponder
Yet another European Union member state drifts rightward.
Big apes, but not small humans, come under protection of Spanish law
The Spanish government is planning a law to give the “hominid family of primates” – that is, to you and me, big apes – protection from experimentation and…
The key to Ukraine is in Beijing
President Zelensky has a new “victory plan,” which he has brought with him on his visit to the United States this week.
The UN admits it: global government is what it wants to meet all ‘challenges’
On September 23, the United Nations agreed a Pact for the Future, 56 actions meant to tackle everything from climate change to poverty.
Wagenknecht and the rest need to remember who helped Germany rebuild
It is a hackneyed cliché to say about Germany that it was too late unified, took too long to decide whether it was an Eastern or Western-facing country, and could…
Does the cordon sanitaire still really exist?
For decades, the European establishment has drawn a cordon sanitaire (a sanitary cordon, meaning a refusal to deal with certain parties) around parties of the populist-right.
South Asia in deep water as Bangladesh falls for Islamist propaganda
While the world's eyes have been elsewhere, on Gaza, Ukraine, or developments in the South China Sea, tensions have been rising in South Asia.
The pagers are part of Israel’s perma-war, where only technology and scale change
For friends of Israel, the murderous events in Lebanon last week were a sobering reminder that all wars are fought by evil means, and innocent people, including…
Metsola has broken no rules, absolutely none…so what is that bad smell?
Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament, has been touched by two scandals in less than a month, both involving allegations of influence peddling and…
Brussels forcing production of EV cars nobody wants, sales crash 70 per cent in Germany
Some bad news for the European Union's Green New Deal: sales of electric vehicles have declined 18 per cent across the Union, led by a 33 per cent retreat in France…
Pope to visit the faithful of Belgium, but not the EU institutions, faithful or not
Pope Francis will not visit the European institutions during his trip to Luxembourg and Brussels, which will take place from September 26 to 29.
German police try to strong-arm US media company’s freedom of speech
Political correctness in its original sense is a notion used in the early 20th century by totalitarian regimes in order to describe what was in tune with the party…
European Union: it has become illegal to fight illegal immigration
Neither the massive arrival of boats to the Canary Islands, the Solingen attack, nor the election results in Thuringia and Saxony are surprising or political earthquakes.
The missiles of September
The missile story that gripped Western attention last week is very revealing for the state of our “strategic” thinking.
Germany will take 40 years to regain its 2004 capabilities in tanks, 100 years in howitzers
Here is something from one of my Bush-Republican friends, one of those American Republicans who hates Trump but will not desert the party.
Ukraine could be Europe’s moment, if the will is there
Western Europe could quite properly see the Ukraine war as it now stands as a great opportunity.
Waging lawfare: Italian prosecutors try to imprison a democratically-elected leader
In 2019 Matteo Salvini, then Italy’s Interior Minister, blocked a boat from the pro-migrant NGO Open Arms charity from docking in Italy.
Europe does not define, defend or duplicate itself: on it goes to doom
The first page of Draghi report on the wretched future of Europe provides an unintentional insight into why the SS EUtanic is heading for the iceberg.
Shutting down UK blast furnaces means outsourcing carbon emissions to China
Consider the misguided environmental policies that the British government is currently pursuing.
Blame German politicians and their EU elite friends for open border policies in Europe
There are many reasons why European voters are turning to national conservative politics, but the most important one is mass and illegal immigration.
Draghi offers the EU a future of the Good, the Very Bad and the Dead Ugly
Note: This comment originally appeared on September 12 in our weekly newsletter Signal Berlaymont