Puzzlepolitics

Yesterday's meeting with Zelensky at the White House was hard to watch. It was tense, not just because the situation is extremely delicate, but because people were shouting in a rare display of complete lack of control. For a man who preaches diplomacy, JD Vance showed he has none. When asked how you can deal diplomatically with a dictator like Putin, who has violated diplomatic agreements in the past, and who has, you know, invaded Ukraine , Vance started raising his voice and shifted the conversation from facts to ad personam attacks, asking Zelensky why he hasn't "said 'thank you' once" since coming into the meeting, and blaming him for asking a completely legitimate question the vice president simply didn't have an answer to. We all understand the war must end, as it cannot go on forever. We also understand that Ukraine cannot win against Russia without support from the West. What we need to figure out is a solution where, even if we let Russia keep th...

Many people in the UK were anxious about prime minister Keir Starmer's meeting with US president Donald Trump today. With so much going on between Ukraine, a trade deal, tariffs and the Chagos islands, there is a lot to be concerned about. Starmer's performance was, maybe surprisingly, quite good. It probably didn't hurt that the meeting with Trump started with a letter from His Majesty the King, inviting Trump for a second visit to the UK - an unprecedented invitation that Trump felt rather flattered to receive. The king surely deployed his soft power and it did seem to smooth things to a great start. On his part, Starmer got most of what he came for. Trump made a somewhat vague claim about defending the British in Ukraine should peacekeeping forces be deployed - something which he however said would not be necessary. America's presence in the region to mine minerals will be enough to keep a lasting peace - or so the president believes. Starmer also cleverly balanced h...

Stabbings, phone snatching, robberies and train drivers' strikes: living in London is a survival game that isn't for the faint of heart. To our rescue comes our saviour Sadiq Khan with a plan to "turbocharge" economic growth. No, your council tax isn't going down as part of this plan. And neither are any of your other taxes. To fuel economic growth across the capital, the mayor has unleashed the full power of his creativity and is going to try something that has never been tried before: an innovative mix of socialism and wishful thinking. To be fair, the plan does have a few interesting bits, mostly around investments in tech and AI. But considering that most of our trains aren't allowed to drive themselves thanks to the train drivers' unions, who would starve without drivers, I will not be holding my breath for "AI" to make London's bloated public sector more efficient. Today's technology could solve many issues already, but it isn't...

Whisper it, but Europe is changing. UK prime minister Keir Starmer announced yesterday that his country will commit 2.5% of GDP to defence, which will later be increased to 3%. Germany's Merz, who won the elections on Sunday and is likely to become the new chancellor, has warned that NATO might soon be dead and vowed to make Europe 'independent' from America. France's Macron is considering extending its nuclear shield to Germany. If you haven't noticed, Europe is preparing for war. It doesn't mean that a war is definitely coming, but it does mean that if war does come, Europe might be prepared. And the best way to avoid a war is to have strong deterrents in place, anyway. I've ranted extensively about Europe's (especially Germany's) inability to protect itself, and seeing Europe's leaders talk defence seriously is refreshing. It is, of course, not a coincidence that all of this is happening right after Trump's radical change of rhetoric abou...

Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and I believe this is the case with the current US president. He is a broken clock – but he does have a point regarding Europe. Donald Trump is wrong about most things. In fact, he is wrong about so many things that listing them all would take ages. For simplicity (and to save everyone time) it is much easier to say what he is not wrong about, and I believe on European military spending he is right. Let’s go back in time together. It is 1949 and the West has formed a military alliance called NATO, which aims to provide security to all of its member states. Translated to simple terms: it is a military alliance that protects the West from the Soviet Union. The West, of course, boasts a long list of values to defend: freedom, democracy, the rule of law, and so on. NATO is a military alliance by necessity of the fact that in this world you can only defend yourself by being strong (ideally the strongest), but at heart it is also an organisation that...

Let’s start by saying what this post isn’t: this isn’t an article in support of AfD. It also isn’t an article against AfD per se. This is a post about what I think is the reality of the political landscape in Germany, how AfD fits into it, and why its detractors might want to see it in a coalition government sooner rather than later. Ever since AfD was born it has drawn criticism from all sides of Germany’s political spectrum. Everyone has been quick to criticise it every step of the way (a way that has been punctuated by many mistakes, if we’re honest), and German conservatives (CDU and CSU alike) have stayed well clear of forming alliances with AfD in order to keep their reputations intact. There is something about AfD that to many Germans sounds a lot like an echo from a past they have been working hard to apologise for: AfD’s rhetoric around immigrants, as well as some of its members’ comments on whether all Nazis were criminals , have mostly been met with fear and a substantial do...

I’ve explained in the introduction that our political beliefs are shaped by core values that most of us can agree on in principle, although their reification may result in divergence of opinion due to competing principles and prioritisation preferences (I am not making a philosophical word salad, please do read the introduction if you haven’t done so). Over the next few posts we will explore my core values, which you will hopefully agree are reasonable. The first is the freedom of the individual. A person should be allowed to live as freely as possible (an ambiguous expression which, like I said, can cause disagreement when we specify how it is “implemented”). I believe in freedom because I believe we are all born against our will: nobody is born out of choice, and so it would be unfair to be born into a world that puts restrictions on us. At birth, we don’t owe anything to anyone: we should not, in other words, be limited by anyone’s rules as we did not agree to them — we should be...

Each one of us has a set of guiding principles that shape our thought. These may be principles we have blindly inherited from our family, surroundings, or cultural exposure, or they may be ideas we have spent countless hours actively thinking about and debating, maybe even changing our mind a few times along the way before ultimately settling on a set of core principles we felt comfortable with. Regardless of where your principles come from, or how you came to holding them dear, I believe that the vast majority of us have at least some of these in common, and that it is very rare for someone to have a completely unoverlapping set of core beliefs with the rest of the population. Extremes do exist, of course, but I (maybe naively) believe that most people are good-natured, and that at least on the theoretical plane common ground can be found with almost anyone. Before we get to my core beliefs, I should say three things. The first is that core principles can translate differently into ac...