It really does not matter what structures are in place to coordinate, direct, and execute strategic military aims; what matters is clarity of responsibility

Britain is under attack from Russia. And the government is blocking a Parliamentary report that details it

‘Poles like me look on Brexit with admiration and hope. The British may create a new opening for Europe and its peoples, in the same way as Solidarity in Poland was an opening of a new era’

More than most statesmen of his time, Metternich thought about history and his place in it. He was right to worry: most biographies have depicted him as an essentially reactionary politician—a “coachman” of Europe who was fond of the whip hand

"No one should miss the stench of cowardice, and yet there is no sign voters care or understand that cowardice runs through the British state"

‘I am an instinctive, conventional, tribal Conservative voter. But now I just can’t bear even to listen to the shenanigans in Parliament a moment longer’

Without some kind of internal border—in other words, status-checking by employers, landlords and so on—there would be a huge incentive for people, especially from poorer countries, to arrive and stay permanently but illegally

‘Whether Buddhist, Christian, or Stoic, the central idea is that the human condition involves suffering. By contrast, the new religion of wellbeing demands constant happiness’

Being a US citizen brings rights and obligations — some of them onerous and unwanted

‘When I was at the BBC, the cliché was that we left our politics at the door. It appeared not to need saying that other aspects of your personal identity should also be left at the door’