Tag Archives: Paul Mason

The grandiose promises Johnson makes to survive, Paul Mason writes, rely on a state like those … in the European Union. Paul Mason* Boris Johnson has survived, but only just. The 148 Conservative MPs who voted no confidence in the prime minister on June 6th represented 41 per cent of …

Russia has upended the old rules-based order, Paul Mason writes. Europe needs to shape a new one. Paul Mason* While Western capitals scramble to send supplies of arms, munitions and aid to Ukraine, the strategic choices looming over the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are becoming clearer. NATO’s ‘strategic concept’—a 12-year-old …

The Conservative Party used to be famed for its pragmatic retention of power, Paul Mason writes. It’s lost that muscle memory. Paul Mason* Meltdown’ was the word Britain’s newspapers reached for as Boris Johnson’s administration fell apart at the end of last week. As a metaphor, it’s accurate. In a literal nuclear …

Paul Mason finds the democratic world in the very disarray the authoritarian in the Kremlin has sought. Paul Mason* Do you want to go to war with Russia over Ukraine? You wouldn’t have to go yourself, but you would have to approve sending tens of thousands of young Europeans and …

Despite petrol shortages and empty shelves, Labour is adrift—and Johnson may press the Northern Ireland protocol nuclear button. Paul Mason* At my local petrol station, a cadre of young men have suddenly appeared, in high-visibility jackets, to instruct car drivers in the fine art of the jammed-nose-to-tail refill. Each pump …

A by-election in Northern England highlights the corrosive atrophying of the UK body politic, Paul Mason writes. Paul Mason* Last week’s by-election in Batley & Spen, an old Yorkshire manufacturing town with a Labour tradition and a large postwar South-Asian Muslim population, has opened up a new chapter in post-Brexit politics. With …

Fascism is not just sepia images of yesteryear but a contemporary threat. A liberal-left alliance is needed to counter it. Paul Mason* If you search the database of white-supremacist Discord channels, leaked by the monitoring group ‘UnicornRiot’ since 2018, the word ‘genocide’ appears more than 10,000 times. Often it is …

Labour’s electoral debacle, Paul Mason writes, epitomises European social democracy’s coalition-building challenge. It just doesn’t see it that way. Paul Mason* In British politics, the proverbial penny has finally dropped. With Labour’s abject defeat in the Hartlepool by-election, the party’s loss of council seats in working-class areas—not just to the Conservatives but to the …

Paul Mason finds in the UK’s foreign, and defence review a wilful refusal of its natural European engagement. Paul Mason* Will British tanks be mothballed? Will the artillery be shelved? Will infantry battalions be dissolved? Will there ever be enough fighter jets to protect the aircraft carrier? Answers to these …

Paul Mason writes that a Biden’s US presidency allied to an EU pursuing ‘strategic autonomy’ leaves a ‘sovereign’ UK with a bit-part role. Paul Mason Poor, isolated and destined to disintegrate. That is how the United Kingdom looks from the outside, in the first few weeks of its ‘freedom’ from …