April 2020

There have been a hell of a lot of opinions put forward about modern China – from the Blairite vision of a superpower of economic liberalism with lots of CCTV, integrated fully in the system, to cold-warrior visions of a monolithic neo-USSR, anarchist hopes of a convergence of mass-group incidents into revolution, tankie fantasies of…

Read More 10 years of the Jamie Doctrine: not a symposium of the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House

The jarring combination of absolutely pristine spring weather and a national emergency reminded me of something the other day. Viridian foliage, crystalline skies, working from the back steps in glorious sunshine, a massive financial crisis, no aeroplanes – of course, I’d been here before. It’s eerily like the weeks following the Eyjafjallajokull eruption back in…

Read More Still under that volcano.

What to do while you’re living under two nations, in isolation? What about….blogging? We’re about at the time in the media life-cycle when you should expect takes arguing that panic-buying is actually good to appear, and indeed I see someone’s trying to rebrand it as “resilience buying”. Never mind. A lot of people think it’s…

Read More Keynes and the Case of the Disappearing Bogrolls