Financial Times News - Philip Stephens Column

How to make a successful failure out of Copenhagen

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:30:35 GMT

Next month's United Nations climate change conference is doomed to failure. The pre-emptive recriminations are already under way weeks before any delegates are due to arrive in Copenhagen. The finger of blame is being pointed firmly at Washington. It hardly seems worth the carbon to fly in all those officials, environmentalists, scientists and lobbyists, not to say presidents and prime ministers.

The open question in Obama's Afghan plan

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:05:33 GMT

Word from the White House is that Barack Obama is close to a decision on the war in Afghanistan. Those keeping count say the US president has now spent more than 18 hours in intense consultations with senior advisers and military commanders. The options have been narrowed.

Relax, Mr President. There's no need to rush

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:05:29 GMT

Take your time Mr President. Ignore the sniping. Don't be rushed. Impatience is the scourge of the age.

Pay parliamentarians the rate for the job

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:55:24 GMT

Does Britain want a parliament peopled by the rich, the retired, the young and the childless - perhaps with a few party hacks thrown in? That is the way it is heading by stripping MPs of their allowances.

The future or the museum? Europe's moment of choice

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:40:18 GMT

The other day a visitor from China asked whether I thought Britain was falling into inexorable decline. Had it been hit by a temporary shock from which it was possible to rebound? Or were we witnessing a permanent waning of its international power and prestige - a resumption of a trend that began with its retreat from empire more than 60 years ago? Could British politicians lean against the march of history?

Storms lie ahead for politics' odd couple

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:35:22 GMT

Mervyn King and George Osborne are the odd couple of British politics: a self-consciously cerebral governor of the Bank of England and an intensely political Tory shadow chancellor united in condemnation of the government's handling of the financial crisis. For now, the relationship works to mutual advantage. It may not always be so.

Turkey turns east as Europe clings to past

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:45:38 GMT

Small incidents can illuminate a bigger picture. A couple of weeks ago, President Abdullah Gul of Turkey opened an exhibition of Ottoman treasures in Paris. The display is the centrepiece of an effort to promote Turkey's rich heritage. Mr Gul was joined by Nicolas Sarkozy. The French president arrived chewing a piece of gum.

A five-step programme to save the BBC

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:05:27 GMT

Of one thing we can be sure if David Cameron wins Britain's coming general election: the Conservatives would rein back the BBC. And if Gordon Brown's government were to defy political gravity and scrape back into office? Well, it would set about reining back the BBC.

Bankers, bonuses and the market: plus a change

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 22:20:17 GMT

So what's different? As the financial crash fades in the memory, the question most frequently asked, and infrequently answered, is how permanent will be its imprint. To my mind, the answer is obvious. Everything has changed; and, of course, nothing has changed.

Enough of the politics of pessimism

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:20:20 GMT

Something has gone wrong. Elections are a time to cheer up the voters, even, dare one say it, to bribe them. Britain's politicians seemed joined instead in a bidding war to beat them up. With an election due next summer, competing visions of sunlit uplands have made way for promises of long winters of austerity. Britain risks being drowned in pessimism.

Little Englanders are of little use to America

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:10:27 GMT

David Cameron wants to go to Washington for an audience with Barack Obama. He would like to bypass Brussels. If, as seems likely, the Conservatives win the coming general election, the Tory leader will discover that the facts of foreign policy are otherwise. Britain's relationships with the US and Europe are inescapably interdependent.

Europe loses its Lisbon hiding place

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:25:17 GMT

The end is in sight. Fingers crossed, after eight painful years, the European Union may at last succeed in rewriting its rule book. Passage of the Lisbon treaty will sweep aside the continent's troubles. Europe can turn its mind to things that matter. So the story goes.

Small change despite call for change

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:40:09 GMT

It was not a speech to save a premiership. Gordon Brown won respectful, occasionally warm applause for his last Labour conference appearance before the election. But the speech, overburdened with announcements old and new, small and only slightly less small, scarcely changed the political calculus. Mr Brown has never learned to tell a story; perhaps that is because he has never really had one.

Time for Gordon's last throw of the dice

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:20:20 GMT

Go on Gordon. Gamble. Enough of prime ministerial hesitation. Break the habit of a lifetime. Throw the dice. Pick up David Cameron's challenge to go head to head on television. Better still, say you want three pre-election debates not one. There is nothing left to lose.

Four things you need to know about the global puzzle

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:05:18 GMT

From New York to Pittsburgh you could hear the crunching and grinding of geopolitical plates. The latest jamborees at the United Nations and the Group of 20 leave the new global landscape still very much a work in progress. Some of the contours, though, stand in sharper relief.

Is this the Liberal Democrat moment?

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:00:26 GMT

Party conference season and the air is thick with oxymoron. As the politicians scramble for attention, the English language is bent beyond all meaning.

The west's finger-wagging will not force Iran into line

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:10:21 GMT

The west has spent the past several years in an effort to bid up the price Iran must pay for the pursuit of its nuclear programme. The sanctions strategy is running out of road. The time has come to change the argument, turning a threat into an offer. Unless the US and Europe want to join Benjamin Netanyahu's Israeli government on a shortening path to war, they should set out what Iran would gain from lifting its pariah status.

Coyness trumps candour in spending debate

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:00:22 GMT

There are lies, damned lies and arguments about public spending. Of one thing, Britain's voters can be certain: whatever is said by the politicians before the coming general election it will understate the pain to be felt afterwards.

A misreading of the past holds a lesson for the future

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:35:11 GMT

Everything was so much tidier before the Berlin Wall came down. There was the small matter of the existential struggle with communism. But after a couple of near-misses, we learned to live with mutually assured destruction. The cold war stand-off was stable and predictable. Security had a single meaning: containing the ambitions of the Soviet Union.

Murdoch rides to the rescue of the BBC

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 18:40:29 GMT

James Murdoch wants to blow up the BBC. He could yet turn out to be its unwitting saviour.

The global consensus is starting to crack

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:30:21 GMT

The novelty is wearing thin. The eager anticipation and diplomatic hoopla that attended the London summit has given way to a certain weariness ahead of this month's gathering of the Group of 20 leading nations. Back in the spring, leaders of the biggest economies could claim to have saved the world. What on earth do they do for an encore?

Cut the banks (and bonuses) down to size

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:50:34 GMT

The Conservatives' George Osborne must be right. Britain's government should impose a cap on bankers' bonuses. But wait a minute, Hector Sants surely has a point when he counters it is not the job of financial regulators to fix pay rates. Politicians in London and beyond are struggling to square the circle.

Running to stand still? The peace test for Netanyahu

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 21:40:11 GMT

Benjamin Netanyahu has what kindly observers might describe as a credibility problem. Travelling in Europe this week, the Israeli prime minister said he was straining every sinew to restart peace talks with the Palestinians. His interlocutors were unconvinced. Mr Netanyahu looks too much like a politician running in the cause of standing still.

Lockerbie deal exposes the price of realism

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:40:25 GMT

Britain secures privileged access to Libya's oil riches; Muammer Gaddafi claims a diplomatic coup on the eve of celebrations to mark his 40 years of autocratic rule; Scotland's nationalist politicians get to strut their stuff on the international stage. Throw in the recent encounters of senior British politicians with the Libyan leader and his son Saif Gaddafi and you can see why some are shouting conspiracy.

A friendless Russia is held hostage to Putin's vanity

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 19:00:15 GMT

The conventional story about Russia has been one of power reclaimed after the fall to chaos during the 1990s. Oil, gas and autocracy have restored it to the ranks of world powers. Some of the more hyperbolic commentary has gone so far to say that, along with China, Moscow has created an entirely new model to challenge western liberalism.