Global Politics

The futility and danger of nuclear weapons in the post-9/11 world is indisputable The 2003 Oscar-Winning documentary The Fog of War, containing Robert McNamara’s post-Vietnam mea culpa, also highlighted one of the former US Defence Secretary’s greatest concerns – nuclear weapons. “The indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will destroy nations,” McNamara maintained. […]

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CC Image courtesy of Rareclass This piece was also published in Huffington Post on 23rd June 2016 Something we in Scotland learned the hard way in 2014 is that referendum questions are dangerous because they make both choices on the ballot paper seem equally plausible. By giving the people a choice we somehow assume that […]

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In trying to puzzle through the populism animating the right and left after the 2008 global financial crisis and the 2015 European migrant crisis, we can draw a worrying parallel between the UK referenda and social and economic populism in the US. As in the US presidential race, the UK’s Remain/Leave debate is complex: it […]

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The Conservative party has this week been briefing about the possibility of a Labour government supported by the SNP leading to a constitutional crisis. However, this crisis may be largely of their own making. Polls currently suggest that the Conservatives will be the largest party in Westminster, both in terms of vote share and seats, […]

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Will Hutton has probably been the most influential writer on the British constitutional state over the last two decades. Last night he issued a call to arms arguing that the party leaders at Westminster have just 10 days to announce a constitutional settlement to ‘save the Union’. Personally I think it’s a bit late in the day for […]

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