Fernando González Urbaneja | The new British Prime Minister is young (42), rich (almost a billion in assets), Hindu (family religion) and a graduate of Oxford and Stanford (Fulbright programme). He has been in Parliament for seven years and, after working for Goldman and several investment funds, he headed the Treasury (with Boris Johnson) before rising to become Minister of Finance. A dense professional career that is a credit to…
Pedro Sánchez, Emmanuel Macron and António Costa (who, for Portugal, has also been part of the dialogue) have decided to discard the gas pipeline that had been proposed through the Pyrenees, the MidCat. They have agreed that a new project, BarMar, will replace it. This is an underwater gas (or hydro-product) pipeline that will link Barcelona and Marseille via the Mediterranean Sea bed. This solution, however, has its cost: the…
The coalition of conservatives, post-fascists and populists, led by Giorgia Meloni, won 44% of the votes in both Congress and the Senate, with 96% of the votes counted. “It is the time of responsibility, we will govern for all Italians”, said the very possible future prime minister after an election with a historic abstention rate. With a turnout of 63.9%, Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia had 26.2% of the vote, Enrico…
“… From the 18th century to the present, apart from occasional skirmishes, what we call the West has unilaterally assaulted Russia on 5 serious occasions. Charles XII of Sweden, an undisputed military genius of poor political skill, attacked the Russia of Peter the Great, crossed from the Baltic into the Ukraine with his troops, and, only there at Poltava, in 1709, the Swedish King and his Ukrainian allies were defeated….
Fernando González Urbaneja | Irish unification is likely to be on the horizon later this decade. Demographics and politics are transformative. And both are on the side of unification. Last week’s elections in the six northern counties point to changing majorities. Unification has not occupied the campaign debates, but it looms large as it is part of the permanent and structural agenda. Republican parties are now dominant against those who…
Fernando González Urbaneja | Until the French electoral cycle concludes with the June legislative elections, which will define the composition of the new government, it is premature to conclude on the ideological-social-moral map of the French. The right-left axis is of little use when the winning candidate, Enmanuel Macron, flees from this taxonomy, and the losing candidate accumulates 13 million votes (425) that are incompatible with the category of “extreme”….
After a crisis-plagued mandate, centrist Emmanuel Macron on Sunday became the first president to win re-election in France since 2002. With 58.54% of the vote, the candidate of La République en Marche, once again defeated Marine Le Pen, standard-bearer of Rassemblement Nationale, who would have won 41.46% of the vote in Sunday’s election. “From now on, I am no longer the candidate of one camp, but the president of all,”…
Nick Ottens (Atlantic Sentinel) | Supporters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon who are thinking of sitting out the second round of the French presidential election ought to take a lesson from Bernie Sanders’ supporters in the United States. When they abstained from the 2016 presidential election, or voted for Green party candidate Jill Stein, they made it possible for Donald Trump to win. Just 1.5 out of 136 million Americans voted for…
Fernando González Urbaneja | Russian journalist Masha Gessen wrote a biography of Putin ten years ago (“The Man Without a Face” Debate) which was recommended reading then and even more so now. In chapter 3 (Autobiography of a Thug) she sketches the character that Putin’s unofficial biographers did not hesitate to highlight when praising his character. During his youth in Leningrad (now and formerly St. Petersburg) he behaved like a…
Nick Ottens (Atlantic Sentinel) | António Costa no longer needs them for a majority. Portugal’s far left put purity before power and lost power. Until 2015, neither the Communists nor Left Bloc had ever been in government. That year, the Socialists fell short of a majority and António Costa made a deal with the smaller parties. In return for policies like free textbooks in schools and a higher minimum wage,…