Suddenly, driverless cars have crossed from nerdland to the mainstream, as every manufacturer inches their way there, and google, whose cars have nearly clocked up a million miles, have a go at serious disruption. They may well succeed: whereas humans are lousy drivers, machines will soon be perfect ones, and ageing enthusiasts apart (yes, I do have a record player), why would anyone choose to grip a wheel and stressfully stare at road for an hour when you can do whatever you do in any room in your house ? Experts guesses are now clustering around 2020 as the moment a competitive market has critical mass and all our kids want one. An intriguing question, to which the answer is…

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So the results are in, as expected (see the tide rises, the tide falls, below) but more so. The front nationale’s win in france is spectacular, as is ukip’s, for all that it was predicted. There are other big stories, though overall the mainstream pro-european parties keep a clear majority and the extremes are unlikely to unite. This suggests that beyond a high-pitched media period, europe will set about its new cycle of work, starting with key appointments, which the national governments (not “europe”) make. Well-known to me as former head of the eurogroup, jean-claude juncker (see in celebration of, 18 june 2011) may or may not get the most important post of commission president. It is worth noting he…

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This is not america. Yet, political streams there often flow into europe a decade later. So an economist article claiming the political heat is ebbing from the immigration issue is interesting. The tea party’s founding idea was shrinking the state (see no deleveraging at home, 24 october 2011), but amongst the fellow traveller issues it co-opted, immigration probably loomed largest; strange in a country built on bringing in the world’s tired and poor huddled masses. As recession and hardship swept europe’s own masses, so, as you would expect, the political fortunes of the radical and anti-establishment have risen (see of populism, 9 november 2013), as clearly seen in this weekend’s european elections, with those parties recording spectacular new high-water marks.…

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I spent most of my final undergraduate year studying india’s crucial period of 1919-31, enjoying almost alone the splendours of the indian institute reading room, which I have just now googled to find closed some years ago. Despite that gifting me a lifelong interest and appreciation of all things india, I have not yet managed to visit, my mid-twenties six-months–in-israel, six-months-in-india plan getting waylaid some years on its first leg. There are many political parallels between the two, not least the dominance of the centre left independence party for decades (anc anyone ?), which after a false start in the 1990s looks finally to have come to an end in india with the triumphant victory of narendra modi and the…

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Occasionally the eurovision song contest is a big event in our house; and 2014 was one. All the ducks lined up: everyone in, a slow saturday night, no plans, a late dinner, the kids lobbying for a late night, and the family increasingly struggling to find things that we can watch together. Being of course a most european family, there is some natural affinity too, and we don’t start with the default cynicism its always had in the uk, even when I remember watching terry wogan as a child. My other half remembers saw it in hungary when abba won, and we watched it together in germany, where the politics of who votes for whom, and the “big 5” coming…

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The ukraine crisis has taken several steps forward, or backward if the concept of ukraine functioning as a viable sovereign state is the objective. A rather soft attempt at a central government show of force backfired spectacularly when armoured personnel carriers sent in were quickly surrendered. The pro-russian forces occupying ever more buildings in “the east” of the country have all the momentum. Whilst clearly russia is complicit, it is clearly too tapping into a strong well of identification with russia that goes back to the perplexity of many russians of the soviet union waking up one day 20 years ago to be told they now lived in the independent state of ukraine. Still umbilically attached to russia until very…

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John kerry has put more into the israel-palestinian talks over the last months than anyone since clinton, with dozens of americans shuttling, negotiating, cajoling and even desperately bringing into play sovereign american collateral by offering the release of israeli-spy-in-american jail jonathan pollard. To no avail. Israel stalled on prisoner releases, the palestinians reignited their progress to statehood at the un (see (yet) another (small) step to parastine, 1 december 2012), israel cancelled its prisoner release and the palestinians – well, both sides have proved beyond doubt they were at the table only to humour the americans, with no expectation of ever achieving anything. A decade ago the “peace process” became the alibi replacing peace. Now even that is beyond reach,…

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Excellent article in this week’s economist, that calls putin’s russian aggression in the crimea what it is: bold non-acceptance of the shaky current world order and the consequential plunging of the whole world into a new and highly-uncertain one. I would mesh this with my oft-commented remarks about the old world’s inability to integrate the new, mainly china, into its real seats of power, that have left the now-emerged powers less than enthusiastic about the status-quo, and hence largely ambivalent about this step towards its destruction. 1989 and the soviet union’s collapse produced a “unipolar moment” for the american “indispensable nation”, epitomised by the first Gulf War (see how we made the fatal mistake of not talking to hamas). This…

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Though we obsess about it, europe rarely deserves global geopolitical headlines. Ukraine though, is an exception. The baltic states were desperate to join the eu in the 1990s because it enabled them, like drunken boxers, to pull the rope over their heads and step out of the ring to the promised land that for all europe’s many faults they still enjoy. Ukraine had no such luck, and remained from that day to this in the vague netherland that is soviet union post-sovereignty. For most russians the crimea always was and always will be part of russia, but it was tolerable having it nominally in the ukraine, as long as russia retained sufficient influence in its “near abroad”. The day that…

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