'Dangerously reasonable' analysis on politics, science, and particularly the bit where they bump into each other. I aim to give an independent, fact-focused, non-ideological take on the issues that matter.
Lots of people have gotten excited about an upset win for an old-fashioned socialist candidate in the New York Mayoral race. Notwithstanding the implications or otherwise of the politics of it, the real lesson that De...
Suddenly, Trump had a moment and called off the ongoing trade talks with Canada. The reason - or, at least, the excuse - was the incoming Digital Services Tax about to be implemented (and running as a forerunner to th...
We heard all the promises during the confirmation hearing for Robert F Kennedy Jr. He was not anti-vax. He was not promoting conspiracy theories. He was not going to be messing around with immunisations schedules for...
So the President Trump's United States just dropped a bunch of its 'bunker buster' bombs on the nuclear enrichment sites in Iran. Technically, that means it has joined the war between Iran and Israel. But it all depen...
The Trump Administration's trademark abrupt bullying has just led to key regional ally Japan cancelling an annual security summit. Between America's sudden unreliable ally status, and its assault on Japan's economy vi...
The G7 Summit of 2025 may come to represent the last gasp of the old rules-based world order, condemned to impotence and irrelevance as President Trump pondered whether to enter the war with Iran, and showed the shift...
The most frequent setbacks to the Trump Administration have been in the courts, up to and including the Supreme Court with its Trump-appointed judges - as things it seeks to do are found to be illegal. Of course, this...
Something happened almost, but not quite, unnoticed. Trump admitted that his administration's approach to its mass deportation project was having a major consequence - and the policy on illegal immigration has been qu...
Israel has transformed the world geopolitical stage again by launching a direct and sustained assault on Iran. It wrongfooted President Trump by doing so in open defiance of his wishes, and it has presented him with a...
The crisis in LA has deepened since we discussed it two days ago. President Trump doubled the number of National Guard, and added 700 US marines for good measure. He speculated about the merit of arresting state gover...
The use of the National Guard to quell violent protests / riots in LA obviously crosses a line, but it's only the start of a journey that was mapped out by the authors of Project 2025 before Trump was re-elected. The...
Yes, Elon Musk vs Donald Trump - it's very entertaining. The memes are flowing in industrial quantities. But a lot of people are missing just how important a pivot point this is. In classic authoritarian regimes, the...
Ukraine sat down for more direct talks with Russia today - and that managed not to remotely be the story. More important was Ukraine's dramatic strike on air bases deep into Russian territory, where they demonstrated...
We've heard about how tourists are either boycotting holiday travel to the US, or are just scared by stories of people being detained for days or weeks on the border. But now it seems that even business travellers, wh...
President Trump has been having SO much fun, slapping tariffs on the EU, hitting China, randomly spraying charges on everybody including the penguins. But now it has been pointed out, not unreasonably, that maybe one...
We all know that President Trump has taken the decision to end climate action previously being taken by the United States - that is very much his prerogative, albeit that it makes sense only if you can pretend that cl...
Just when it seemed that things might be stabilising just a bit, Trump posted onto social media and suddenly we're right back into the throes of new trade chaos. A 50% tariff against the European Union. A 25% tariff a...
Books have been landing in recent weeks opening up windows into the behind-the-scenes action around the cognitive decline of US president Joe Biden, and how the messy events of his nomination, and then withdrawal, in...
The UK and the EU announced a big post-Brexit trade deal today. For some, it was a common sense shift from the original terms of the Brexit deal to make trade a little easier, and to facilitate much needed defence co-...
So Trump's attempted interference in Canada backfired, and the Liberals' Mark Carney won the recent election. The question is - now what? Can Canada negotiate down those tariffs and establish a relationship with the U...
Every relevant senior member of the Trump cabinet has come out with an attack on former FBI Director James Comey - a truly astonishing exercise in gaslighting to swear that something nobody had previously suggested wa...
It used to be that the United States, as the dominant world power, was the most powerful driving force behind world events, for better or for worse. It made mistakes sometimes, but it was a player. Now, with Trump in...
On Trump's so-called 'Liberation Day', a number of countries suddenly discovered that they were to be whacked with massive tariffs from the United States - including some of the poorest countries in the world. They qu...
Whether in his stated terms, the policy changes he aims to make, or in the Project 2025 actions he's taking to bring in an autocratic system to the US, there are a number of reasons why President Trump is almost sure...
On day one, he declared several emergencies. Later, he backed this up by invoking the Alien Enemies Act. This has been an ongoing and deliberate push by President Trump to extend the powers of the executive, to overco...
In some places, such as Canada and maybe this weekend Australia, populist-right politicians, although they clearly show the signs of being influenced by Trump's MAGA movement, have been disavowing the link as their po...
So Ukraine has finally signed the Minerals Deal with the Trump Administration. And news commentators are full of speculation about how much this deal now has changed Trump's orientation with the Ukraine war, how much...
The news arrived today that the US economy has dramatically cratered - shrinking in the first quarter of the year, whereas it had been strongly growing before. It is fairly clear with the breakdown that this is due to...
Mark Carney's Liberal Party has won the Canadian election. It was close, but still extraordinary that he was able to turn around the massive deficit the party originally had with Pierre Poilièvre's Conservatives. And...
President Trump came out of the gates quickly in his second term, testing the limits of his power in all directions at once, and assaulting numerous institutions to show them that he could bully them into compliance w...
Reports are coming into view about complete disarray at the Pentagon under Trump's controversial pick for secretary of defence, Pete Hegseth. He has fired all his senior advisors, he is isolated, unqualified and unexp...
Answering a question from a Patreon supporter - Should Greenland kick the US out of its one remaining Greenland base, since - if Trump were to make good on his threat to take the island by force - it could be used as...
The Supreme Court ruled decisively 9-0 that the man incorrectly removed from the USA to one of the most notorious prisons in El Salvador, Abrego Garcia, that he should be returned to be afforded the due process any hu...
Trump reversed course, and the stock market flowered in response, and everything's now OK, right? Well, except that a lot of damage has been done, most of the tariffs actually still remain, and there's no sign that th...
The news is just in - after all the bluster and the boasting, Trump finally noticed that not all was going swimmingly with his tariffs on the entire world, and he has hit the pause button. For everyone save China, bec...
Trump is at the centre of things - throwing the global economy into turmoil in the aim of reshaping everyone's relations with the US, as well as reshaping geopolitical alliances and introducing autocratic measures int...
Health researchers, climate scientists, and more - they are finding significant projects being axed for what appear to be purely ideological grounds. This can include projects you would think would be immune to such f...
In the immediate aftermath of the debacle in the Oval Office, it was reported that Trump wanted the minerals deal toughened up to 'punish' Ukraine. This week we got first news that this is exactly what has been done -...
After various members of the senior Trump administration stated flatly that no classified information was revealed in the group chat on the bombing of Yemen, The Atlantic went ahead and published the entire chat threa...
If the people of Greenland thought they would get a respite while they engage in the slow negotiations to form the next government following their recent election - they were wrong. The surprise announcement that top...
One of the key guarantees against authoritarian rule in the United States is the independence of a number of key institutions, especially the judiciary, but also academia, the press, and legislators. We know that Pres...
So the US - Ukraine talks in Saudi Arabia conclude with a proposal for a 30-day ceasefire. A full ceasefire, not the partial one the Ukrainians had initially wanted. Why is the distinction between the partial and tota...
The US-Ukraine talks begin tomorrow in Saudi Arabia, and Ukraine at least will find out then just how ruthless the US intends to be in threatening to let Putin overrun their country unless they agree to cede territory...
In spite of Europe's hopes that somehow there would be a path to keeping Trump onside with supporting Ukraine, the inevitability of the dashing of those hopes is now plain to see. Trump has pulled military support for...
Europe has been regrouping with president Zelensky and trying to come to terms with the fallout from the massive meltdown in the Oval Office on Friday. And British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is primed to act as a key...
February 24th is the anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and - as with the previous years, Ukraine and co-sponsors has put a motion to be voted on by the UN general assembly condemning Russia's actions and ab...
This week, Putin and Russian commentators were delighted, and Ukraine and Western ones were distraught, when Trump announced that he had a long call with Vladimir Putin, and they would be meeting soon to begin negotia...
China has its sights on reunification with China - what people don't realise is how much progress it has been making over the last year in the direction of satisfying that goal. How has their thinking been affected by...
At Reagan National Airport in Washington DC, we have seen a major tragedy with the mid-air collision of a passenger airliner and a military helicopter. Almost immediately, the public space has been awash with a blame...
The Chinese company DeepThink has just released its latest AI large language model - and it has caused a massive reaction. It runs rings around the American AI models for how cheaply and efficiently it is produced and...
In his first week back as president of the United States, Donald Trump started making significant noises on the Ukraine war, and his opening pitch could certainly not be described as good news for Vladimir Putin. But...
Reports came out on Sunday that the former advisor to the prime minister and Brexit campaign supremo Dominic Cummings has been in discussion with Elon Musk about how to get rid of Keir Starmer before the next schedule...
In a press conference this week, president-elect Trump said that he wanted to take control of Greenland and the Panama Canal - not ruling out the use of military force to do so. Oh, and Canada, but limiting himself to...
Looking forward to 2025 - there's no doubt it is going to be the year of Trump. But not only that, it's going to be the year of peak Trump. With every year that follows, his power to achieve his domestic agenda starts...
In the last week, there has been much comment on the astonishing internet response to the murderer of CEO Brian Thompson. Large numbers of people have expressed support and admiration for the action, have heralded Man...
This week, Keir Starmer made a keynote speech laying out his six milestones for how the Labour government should, in his view, be judged at the next election. It's not the first time since taking office he has launche...
The UK Parliament today debated a groundbreaking assisted death bill that could reshape how we approach end-of-life care. The Labour Party has brought forward legislation that would introduce new palliative care optio...
This week sees the COP29 conference on climate change, where the expectation is that the next US president will walk away from the issue, leaving China a golden opportunity to step into the role of global leadership i...
Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F Kennedy Jr are amongst the recent names released by President-Elect Trump as his nominations for his cabinet. To say the least, they have caused something of a stir - a lot more...
The US election has ... finally ... arrived. It's all over, bar the shouting. Except that the shouting has gotten pretty loud, and it's likely to continue for quite some time after the election has taken place. This p...
It has been the sort of week that will be referred to in decades, even centuries, hence as being one that was a turning point in history. There is a lot to come, but let's see if we can make sense of where we have got...
In the US, in the UK and the EU - the proposed shift from internal combustion cars to electric vehicles is starting to become a major factor in a big political shift that's going on. What's driving it (pun not intende...
This week, Rishi Sunak just announced pushing back of a few net zero targets - but much more significantly signalled a shift in campaign positioning that has thrust the issue to the centre of the conflict between the...
Two months in to Ukraine's counter-offensive, and so far - while there have been gains - they are well short of what people had hoped for. The implication is that this war is going to last years not months, notwithsta...
Maybe companies should have values. But should they have the sort of values that are about holding powerful corporations to account, or the ones that turn powerful corporations into policeman over how we live our live...
Boris Johnson has left the building - before launching a broadside against the Parliamentary Privileges Committee process just before it delivered its damning verdict. It found that he had lied repeatedly - which isn'...
This week, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak met the US President Joe Biden and amongst the various topics they discussed was Britain’s desire to carve out a role for itself on the discussion around Artificial Intell...