Fifty years on from Edward Heath, another Conservative Prime Minister faces their premiership being brought even lower by a Middle Eastern energy shock.
We should not shy away from facing the many unsavoury episodes of imperial history. The consequences of Britain’s historical actions are still shaping world events negatively. But that doesn’t mean the moral wrongs of our ancestors should necessarily dominate and guide our actions today.
Kemi Badenoch’s trip last Friday, where she announced upcoming negotiations, marked what has the potential to be a strategic leap forward – especially if the FTA can be expanded to include services, digital, and data.
The danger is that the conflict slowburns into a wider one, with hostilities between Israel and Iran’s proxies accelerating, and knock-on consequences for inflation and Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Now, through Orbán and Trump, the Kremlin is cashing in its chips. Unable to defeat Western-supported Ukraine on the battlefield, it’s playing Western politics to cut off its supply of money and weapons.
A world in which Russian warmongering prevailed over British and American promises would be one where the advantage had passed decisively to the autocracies.
We must stand up for the international rules-based order, international law and human rights, otherwise it will have a long-lasting effect on how Britain is viewed globally.
This European “nationalism” could well produce a considerably more populist EU. Whether that would be good for the UK is another matter.
Even as he focuses primarily on Ukraine and Gaza, he should recognise the new axis of authoritarianism forming between China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, with Myanmar as a subsidiary,
The shift to nuclear-powered submarines has caused some concern in Australia, but despite that all three nations are moving ahead with deepening this vital security alliance.
The commercialisation of higher education has helped transform once elite centres of learning into remedial sectors for failing comprehensives, too ready to take authoritarian cash.
A frontbench mutiny such as this is extraordinary for a party on the cusp of power. Yet the Government keeps managing to keep its own crises front and centre.
As Prime Minister, he swapped scepticism for interventionism, with unfortunate results in Libya.
The Foreign Secretary ought to say something to mark the crossing of a new red-line: the labelling of British citizens as criminal in Jimmy Lai’s sham trial.